Shut up, Meg
by Aaron Ledgers
Summary: Sometimes... you get what you wish for, even if it wasn't in a way you were expecting. And when all is said and done... sometimes, it's too late to take everything back, even if you spend the rest of your life trying to. After a prank gone wrong, the Griffin family is left to pick up the pieces of their broken daughter. Meg has finally shut up... but this time, will it be for good?
1. Prologue: The Wish Your Heart Makes

**Prologue: The Wish Your Heart Makes**

Dreams.

Someone once said... that dreams are windows to the past... windows to the future as well.

They're full of infinite possibilities.

People reach for them.

People fall into them.

Some people even live their whole lives in them.

However, among the millions of people born on this beautiful little dream-filled planet... there was one little girl who's dreams were crushed out of her before they even had a chance to develop. A little girl who grew up so unhappy that she found herself completely unable to raise her eyes to the stars at night... or laugh... or smile. A little girl who grew up in a small town called Quahog, in Rhode Island.

But I'm getting ahead of myself... now, where should I begin?

Ah... yes.

Once upon a time... there was a very wealthy man and woman who had everything that money could buy.

They had all the latest furniture, technology, and a lovely family home: it was everything they could have wanted for their future together. However, the couple was missing something... and it was something that no amount of money could buy. You see, this man and woman desperately wanted to have a son to call their own. The two of them had tried for many years to conceive a child to satisfy this one wish for happiness, but no matter what they did, their attempts were in vain.

A life without children slowly seemed to be growing with each passing month... but then, on the night that the couple had finally lost all hope for children, the young woman was visited by an angel. Whether or not it was a dream... she didn't know... but dream or not, God had heard their prayers and chosen to send an Angel to make a deal with the woman. Alarmed... but not afraid, she had simply looked at him when he'd asked for a small lock of her fiery red hair.

"If you let me have just one simple lock," the angel had told her, "I shall fulfill your wish, and more: I shall triple the reward."

"I'll do anything you want, if only you'll let me have a son!" the woman had told him, cutting a small portion of her tresses and handing it to the angel with an earnest expression; the messenger took the gift and spread his wings as a golden light rained down upon the woman and her sleeping husband, bathing them in otherworldly radiance for several moments.

"I have heard your prayers," the angel spoke, thunderous voice resonating throughout the room. "Cherish the gifts you have been given, Lois Griffin, for there will never be another quite like it in all the world. Promise me that you will cherish everything you are given."

"I promise," the woman told the angel. "I'll cherish him with everything I have!"

The angel smiled down at her and spread his wings once again, causing her to fall into an extremely deep slumber.

When she'd awoke the next morning, she'd thought her encounter had been nothing but an incredible dream... and she'd forgotten about it.

Until her body began to change: after realizing she had morning sickness, she'd gone to the market and taken a test to sate her nagging suspicions... but to her amazement and utter joy, the woman had discovered that she was pregnant with a child. Elated, she'd raced home to tell her husband the joyous news, and the man had actually wept, overcome as he'd been with emotion.

"A son! Our boy!" he'd cried, grinning so widely that his face seemed to be splitting. "We did it! We have a son on the way!"

They'd told everyone about it... everyone.

Joy had followed them wherever they'd gone, for their happiness had spread to others.

Nine months later, however, the happy couple had been hit with shocking news... because, not only did they discover that they'd been given a daughter instead of a son... they'd discovered that the father hadn't actually been the woman's husband. It had been someone else.

And in that instant, the image of a picture perfect family had shattered into a million pieces, for once someone cheats in a relationship... the trust between them is never the same. In that woman's arms, there had been a beautiful baby girl... but instead of being grateful... instead of cherishing her... the happiness of the then-young Griffin family, wonderful as it had been, had gone out like a candle.

Darkness had fallen across their hearts.

The mother hated her for exposing her own infidelity, and the father hated her for not being his offspring.

For an entire year... they'd tried to get rid of her, taking their hate and fury out on the baby that had revealed such a home-wrecking secret. From leaving her at a fire station... throwing her in a lake... down a well... they'd even gone as far as purposely crashing their car, dropping her down the stairs of their home, and dumping her into a plastic bag for hours and hours and hours. But nothing worked: with each incident, blessed as she was, she'd somehow gotten out of every single situation without a single scratch on her.

Miraculously, every time.

With the well, her blanket had gotten snagged on a hook, and her crying had alerted someone later.

With the lake, her blanket had gotten stuck on a floating piece of driftwood... and instead of sinking and drowning, like any other child should have, she'd merely ended up floating across the water to the other shoreline. Wet and crying, but completely unharmed, she'd been found the next day.

With the car accident... her mother had purposely let go, watching as she'd flown through the windshield... but instead of being smashed and broken, her lucky blanket had softened the impact with the glass, and she'd hit a tomato stand, cushioned by the vegetables.

Down the stairs... every time, she'd somehow managed to have SOMETHING cushion her fall.

And the bag, the most lethal of all their attempts... she'd ended up surviving since several holes had been torn open by a pin that had gotten stuck on her blanket.

Impossible situations made possible by the aura of good fortune around her.

However, her parents refused to stop trying... all year, they'd attempted to abandon her, to get rid of her... to _kill_ her.

Again and again and again.

But as hard as they'd tried, they couldn't... and by the end of the first year, they'd given up.

For the next year, they'd instead neglected their daughter completely... hating her more and more with each passing day, since she was nothing but a reminder of the trust they'd lost in each other. The little girl said her first words at only a year old... the words that had been screamed at her whenever she'd started crying like any other infant. But then again... when she'd said them, nobody had been around to hear it.

"Shut... up... Meg..."

Those words... her first words... would follow her everywhere, for the rest of her life.

Silencing her dreams before they could begin.

Destroying her smile before the concept of emotion was even fully recognized within her.

Unlike other babies... not a single smile touched her lips.

At the end of her second year of life, however, her mother had become pregnant again... but this time, they didn't want a child anymore.

The thought of having two unwanted daughters was too much to handle.

So, once they'd found out... her mother had gone to get an abortion, but upon discovering that the child was a boy, had changed her mind. And so, the second child of the family had been born. By that point, she'd been old enough to talk... to comprehend... but that's what had made things so confusing to her. After her brother had been born, instead of being ignored... he'd been showered with love and attention.

Like always, they'd continued ignoring her... and had instead focused solely on the boy that they had so longed for.

Day by day, the way they'd treated their daughter started warping, becoming more hostile.

The more she talked, the more hate she gained.

And those words continued to follow her.

"Shut up, Meg!"

But that was okay... by the time she was three, she'd known her parents hadn't loved her, so she'd detached her heart from them and had instead loved her little brother... his blonde hair, big blue eyes, and goofy smile. She'd played with him, showered him with attention whenever her parents weren't around... loved him.

She'd thought he'd loved her, too, until the day of her fourth birthday.

"Daddy," she'd chirped, walking up to her father and pulling on his shirt. "I turned four years old today..."

In that moment, it had happened.

"Shut up, Meg!" Chris had laughed, flinging his peas at her. "Shut up, Meg!"

Those had been his very first words.

Her family had instantly gone nuts with delight... to the point where her Dad had knocked her to the ground in his haste to pick up her little brother and spin him around. Her mother, crying with joy and laughter... and she... four years old, realizing for the first time that she was alone. Ever since that day, Christopher had become a competitive monster in order to get attention from her parents: if she even tried to _speak_ to them, he would show off to take their eyes off her.

And every time, he would grin in triumph when their parents ignored her in favor of praising him.

As they got older, the one-sided competitiveness grew worse.

If Meg aced a test, Christopher would learn something new and show it off immediately afterwards. If she got the lead role in a play, he outshined her with his acting as a secondary role in the same play. But for some reason, he seemed to become frustrated... frustrated with her lack of motivation, lack of reaction, so he started pushing harder.

Attempting to kill her light before it could begin to shine.

But it never worked, because there had never been any light to kill in the first place.

Her faint smiles and gentle sisterly love had been snuffed out the day he'd spoken for the first time in his life.

At some point, when Meg was six years old, she did go through a phase where she'd been desperate to see her mother smile at her. Lois had always been upset around her, so... she'd tried her hardest to make her mom smile... if only once. Despite her family's negative attitude towards her, she'd tried to change things and spent every single day with them individually during that phase: she'd felt lonely, seeing all the other little kids in school with their wonderful mothers and fathers... and she'd wished for the affection between them.

So, she'd tried her hardest... making them presents... talking to them, despite being told to shut up... she'd really tried.

However, that phase had ended with an abrupt jolt, only three months before she turned seven.

"Mommy, look!" she'd cried, running inside the house; she'd just come home from elementary with a drawn picture clutched in her arms. A picture of her, Peter, Chris, and Lois all holding hands. Grinning, she'd held it up. "Look! Look! I made this for you!"

Her mother hadn't even glanced up from the table.

"Go to your room," she'd growled. "Right now, Meg."

"But Mommy," she'd complained, walking over and putting the picture on the table, "look! I made this just for you!"

"Go to your room, Megan!" she'd barked, making the child jump. "Right now!"

"W-why? What did I do?"

The woman's eyes turned cold.

"Never mind," Lois had muttered, taking a swig of her beer. "You're useless."

"I'm... useless? But, Mommy..."

"There was no point in having you," she'd muttered, burying her face in her hands. "I can't stand this anymore."

"But we're a family, Mommy!" Meg had pressed, hurrying forward and holding out the picture. "See? We're all together!"

She hadn't been expecting it when it happened.

After all, how could she have?

This was her mother, the very woman who had brought her into the world, the first face she'd ever seen.

The one person from whom she craved love and affection from more than any other.

But before she'd been able to react, Lois Griffin had stood up and kicked her daughter in the chest, sending the little girl stumbling backwards so forcefully that she'd lost her balance and gone clean through the glass doors separating the kitchen from the backyard. Skidding across the wood of the patio and cutting her hands on the glass, a shard had sliced her across the forehead and caused a river of red to run down her face.

She had looked up at her mother in pain and shock when she'd angrily stepped forward.

Lois's bloodshot eyes had been so cold and merciless that hell could have been frozen solid.

"Shut up, Meg," she'd murmured in a quietly pleasant tone, glaring daggers. "You were a mistake. "

Then she'd quietly walked upstairs towards her room as if nothing had happened, completely ignoring her bleeding child.

Those words had pierced Meg's heart.

Even after she'd been taken to the hospital and had been given stitches... even after they'd been taken out, leaving behind nothing but a long, thin scar on her head... her eyes had been completely hollow from the inside out. Hollow, shattered, lacking any and all reflective sheen.

It had been a life-changing moment.

Lois's words had followed her everywhere she went.

She hadn't been able to forget that her own mother had said she'd been a mistake. She'd been completely alone in the world: none of the other kids at school had ever really wanted to play with her since she'd been a fairly quiet little girl, and after she'd been given the scar along her forehead, people had been so reluctant to talk to her that one of her teachers had actually given her a fairly cute pink beanie to hide that scar.

The woman had been worried about her lack of friends and desire to express herself, but despite the act of good nature, it hadn't helped.

Because of that, she'd had nobody to tell her that Lois had been wrong.

And as a direct result, she'd grown up thinking she was unlovable.

After all, if her own mother couldn't love her, how could she expect someone else to try?

The answer was simple: she couldn't.

But as always, things had only gotten worse after that.

By the time she'd turned thirteen years old, her whole family had turned her into a means for venting a frustration that would never leave. Would never fade. And it continued to intensify. She was used as a balm for dares, pranks... called ugly, fat, gross... disgusting... and even though, as each day passed, she physically grew further and further away from the insults being tossed at her... other people started saying things, too.

In Middle School, the typical mean girls and bullies that came along with being a kid began to say the same things she'd already heard for years on end.

And it was during that time that her mentality began to change, and she truly believed everything being said about her for the first time.

After that, when she looked in a mirror... she couldn't see herself as anything less than ugly.

She slowly came to loath her own existence, growing hollow on the inside.

When she turned fourteen, her mother became pregnant one more time... and it was then that they also got a dog named Brian. With the help of a machine on his collar, he was able to hold a conversation with them, since it translated his barks into actual sentences.

But it hadn't mattered.

Because even a dog... a dog...

"Shut up, Meg."

And by the time she hit her fifteenth birthday, she'd been completely numb to everything... not a single expression touched her eyes, even when her mouth smiled.

Until her new baby brother had said HIS first words a year later, cracking the pieces of her heart.

"Shut up, Meg."

Everywhere she went.

"Shut up, Meg."

Nobody said anything but that unless they had a new insult.

"Shut up, Meg."

And because of it, her heart finally shattered completely.

From that point on... she was lost in total darkness: hollow on the inside, and lacking what so many other people needed to live... to hope... to _dream._ All Megan Griffin could do was wait. Wait until the day she turned eighteen years old to become an adult. To escape on her own, and go somewhere... to hide, perhaps, in the mountains... or all alone on a beach. To her family, she was less than trash. Less than filth, even. To them... she was _nothing_. A waste of a life.

All alone... all alone in that cold grey world... alone, unloved, harassed... shattering like a mirror in the face of the world's hate.

A small, unloved little girl with memories that were cold and empty, flickering like a dying candle.

And every new memory only grew darker and darker.

This, my friends, is how the story of Meg Griffin began.

Through a broken promise, and a broken heart.

However, when Meg finally did shut up... nobody was expecting it to happen the way it did.

Only three months after she turned eighteen years old... everything in the Griffin Household changed.

Forever.


	2. Chapter 1: Typical Morning

**Chapter One: Typical Morning**

The day everything changed began like any other, in a seemingly typical home, where a seemingly normal mother named Lois Griffin was making breakfast.

Although she was now in her mid forties, Lois was still an exceptionally beautiful woman with close-cropped auburn hair and expressive hazel-green eyes. Her bubbly personality and the air of charm around her never failed to draw the eye or brighten at least one person's mood per day.

She hummed a little tune as she fried a myriad of eggs on the stove, then turned to another frying pan and flipped over her pancakes before popping two pieces of bread into the toaster oven.

"Brian, breakfast is almost ready! Could you go wake Peter and Chris and then grab Stewie?!" she called, voicing ringing throughout the house as she peeled the eggs off the skillet.

"Sure, Lois!" an almost-human sounding voice called back. "I will."

"Also, make sure Peter puts his clothes on before he eats!" she added. "We don't want a repeat of the day he forgot his pants."

She shuddered as a mental flash of her half-naked husband walking out the door with a half-asleep expression seared through her mind.

"Yeah, yeah."

She suspiciously peered around the corner and watched as the white dog padded up the stairs. The robotic undertone beneath his strangely charismatic speech never failed to confuse and amaze her deep down.

To this day, she still didn't fully know how Brian's collar worked or even where he'd gotten it.

She'd asked him once, but he'd remained silent on the matter, and all she really knew was that it had the ability to translate their words into things his mind could understand and in turn, could translate his own mindless barks into proper speech. She would have dug deeper into those peculiar questions had she any real motivation to do so, but she almost always had other things on her mind.

When a series of barks met her ears, she smiled and with a whistle, flipped the eggs, taking a moment to add some cheese before sliding them around the frying pan. Then she added some butter to the pancakes and expertly flipped them onto a plate.

Not long after, a sleepy-looking Stewie came down riding on Brian's back, then came Peter, and then Chris.

"Morning, honey," Peter drawled, walking over to the fridge and pulling a beer out of it. "What's for breakfast?"

"Pancakes with cheese omelets!" she cheerfully told him, hastily walking over and giving him a peck on the cheek before returning to what she'd been doing. "Sit down at the table."

"Morning, Mom," Chris croaked. "Breakfast smells good."

"Well, I want my boys to go out and have a good day," Lois drawled, grinning when he flopped his baseball cap over his shaggy blonde hair. "Can't do your best on an empty stomach, trust me."

Stewie, a child of only four years old, rolled his big blue eyes when Peter put him in the safety seat and Brian hopped up on a chair at the table and sat there beside him, panting, with his tongue lolling out. Not long after that, Chris and Peter both took a seat, all of them waiting for breakfast.

 _My boys,_ she thought. _My wonderful boys._

The good mood that morning was overwhelming.

For once, everyone seemed to be responding pleasantly with each other and the typical banter was accentuated with laughter and merriment. They were all a bit tired, sure, but despite that things were still rather pleasant.

But then, _she_ walked into the room.

Lois's smile turned into a deadpan scowl and the illusion of her happy family shattered into a million pieces.

Meg.

The _daughter_.

Her chestnut bown hair was messy and sticking out in every direction even though she'd obviously run a comb through it twice, and her pale pink shirt draped loosely over her torso, looking too big for her body. Lois eyed her in disgust: she was wearing the same tattered blue jeans, those ugly dark grey tennis shoes, and that awful pink beanie she'd kept practically glued to her head for ten years.

It had faded so much that the crocheted flowers on it had lost their shape, and the color was practically grey.

Wordlessly, Meg hefted the backpack on her shoulder and slinked over to the kitchen sink, grabbing a glass out of the cupboard, and with deft motions, she filled it with water before downing it.

Lois watched as she repeated the process twice, then rinsed out the glass and washed it.

Turning around, Meg looked straight at her.

Lois kept the hate off her face, but that didn't make it go away from her heart. She loathed it when Meg looked at her, since it was like her eyes constantly conveyed that everything was her fault.

Their color and shape and expressiveness mirrored her own in almost every way, but the things they expressed always pissed her off in the worst sort of way.

She always found ways to look down on the world, even from her low station in life, but Meg had never looked anywhere but up at the sky, away from the world around her, wistfully, wanting more than she already had.

Wanting to go places far away from where she really belonged, like she could reach for places higher than her own pitiful station in life.

And a part of Lois knew she could do it.

She had talent with music and singing.

She was good with her hands.

She was smart.

And Lois resented all of it.

Those long-lashed hazel-green eyes, which seemed much smaller than they should have thanks to the battered round glasses resting on her nose, held absolutely no reflective sheen. No feeling. They looked dead, and even when she smiled a bit, there was nothing there and it made Lois smug.

Keeping her low was the only way to win.

"Morning, Mom," Meg quietly greeted, speaking in a tentative tone. "I'm going to school now."

"You're not gonna eat breakfast?" Lois sarcastically inquired, turning away with stiff shoulders; the mood in the kitchen had darkened to the point of being smothering. "It's pancakes and eggs."

"No, but thanks," Meg murmured, hefting her backpack. "I'll get breakfast at school."

When she turned to go, Peter abruptly stood up and swaggered over, grinning nastily.

"Hey, Meeeeeg," he drawled, clasping his hands and innocently looking down at her. "No goodbye hug?"

She turned with an expression of confusion, blinking a few times, and Lois watched as a spark of uncertainty and faint hope made those dead eyes come to life a little bit.

A smirk built up inside her.

Sure enough, when the girl hesitantly lifted her arms and took a faltering step forward to embrace him, Peter grabbed her hair and roughly jerked her head down. She squeaked when she was thrown off balance, dead eyes squeezing shut from the force of his hand on her hair, and flailed, hitting his thighs.

"Dad, stop!" she cried, swinging her arms. "Let go!"

Lois knew what was coming, and she knew he wouldn't stop... he'd done this to her for years.

Meg apparently knew, too, since she held her breath and kept her eyes shut, shoulders trembling when she was crushed against his ass. Everyone, even Lois, laughed when he farted on her and let go, but when she quickly stood up and backed off, he thrust an antagonistic finger in her face.

"HAHAHAHA! Stupid Meg!" Peter cackled, cheeks flushed with mirth. "You fell for it! You fell for it!"

Lois watched, waiting for a reaction, for something.

But there was nothing.

When her daughter lifted her eyes, she was looking at him with no expression, irises lacking any and all reflective sheen, emotionally dead from the inside out. Irritation once again filled her and she went back to eating, not bothering to look back up when Meg rubbed her face and left the kitchen.

Lois wished she would disappear for good.

However, when a strange grin spread across Peter's face and he looked as though a light bulb had just lit up above his head, she mentally prepared herself and cleared her empty plate, rinsing it off in the sink. She knew it was coming in five... four...

"Hey... hey, Lois," Peter chuckled, making her groan internally. "I just got an idea... let's prank Meg today."

"Oh, Peter... you never change," she sighed, rolling her eyes. "What _kind_ of prank?"

"Meg's been paying a lot of attention to Stewie lately," he whispered, smirking with childish glee, "let's see how she reacts if she thinks he's been hit by a car! I can catch the whole thing on camera and send it to America's funniest home videos!"

Lois whirled around, eyes wide with shock.

"PETER!" she squalled, mouth falling open. "A CAR?! HOW COULD YOU SUGGEST PUTTING STEWIE IN DANGER?!"

"Oh, he wouldn't be in danger!" the man assured, then bent over and opened a suitcase beneath the table; Lois blinked when he pulled out a very realistic-looking doll that clearly resembled their four-year-old son. The doll was even wearing Stewie's red coveralls. "See? I had this made a while back to practice holding the real thing."

Lois was unconvinced.

"Peter," she droned, shaking her head. "I'm not too sure about this..."

"It'll be fine!" he soothed, flapping a dismissive hand. "Trust me, Lois."

She went back to cleaning, thinking about it

She didn't really care about Meg.

She was more concerned with Stewie.

But maybe... it wasn't too bad, and it _would_ give her a kick to see some actual panic compared to the lifeless adult Meg was slowly turning into. It had been a while since her last freakout, anyway.

She sighed in defeat, making Peter grin.

"Fine," she exhaled, giving him a look. "You keep an eye on the real Stewie, okay? And don't break my camcorder!"

Her husband laughed, the sound ringing through the kitchen.

"Boy, oh, boy, meg won't know what hit her!"

Lois merely smirked.

And deep down in her heart, she made a wish.

An evil wish.

A wish she never believed would really happen.


	3. Chapter 2: on the daily

**Chapter Two: On The Daily**

There was no point.

Meg was tired.

She left the kitchen, ignoring the sounds of the laughter following her as she headed for the bathroom. After shutting the door, she turned the sink faucet on, hastily taking off her glasses and splashing her cheeks with cool, clean water, then she grabbed the soap off the shelf and scrubbed her skin, disgusted beyond words.

Not with his actions, but with herself, for trusting him again.

Doing so was stupid, but she couldn't stop herself from trying... and it really, really hurt, every single time, since it always turned out this way in the end. After years of enduring this same situation over and over again, she should have gotten the hint and learned not to trust him... or, to at least not feel the heartache.

But she did.

She did, each time.

She had already known what to expect from the beginning, so it shouldn't have hurt at all.

So, why did it?

Once she was clean, she grabbed her glasses and turned to leave, but saw herself in the mirror.

She instantly winced.

Hazel eyes that were much too large for her face stared back at her, framed by ridiculously long eyelashes... wisps of her messy brown hair framed her lightly freckled cheeks, looking—as always—like an old ragged curtain that had once seen better days. Too thin of an aqueline nose made her face look a bit squashed, and her lips were _way_ too full for someone with such high, angular cheekbones. One of her worst features was her skin, though, without a doubt: she was so pale that she looked like she was sick with some incurable disease, or like she'd never been out in the sun.

Slowly lifting her hands, she took her hat off, ignoring the numb sensation on her forehead. Her bangs fell across her eyes once her hat was off, but she pushed them back and stared at the thin, white scar along her skull. After so many years, it was barely even visible anymore... just a faint discoloration, really, but the reason she was always hiding it _wasn't_ because she thought it made her look ugly, like everyone thought. It was because every time she saw this scar, she remembered how she'd gotten it...

And the words that had been spoken to her that day.

 _"Shut up, Meg. You were a mistake."_

She winced and roughly dragged her hat back on, turning away from the mirror.

She was ugly.

Unwanted.

Unloved.

She walked out of the bathroom and past the kitchen, where her family was still gushing over Peter's typical antagonism.

The wind lifted her hair off her shoulders when she finally left the house, but instead of looking at the ground, she kept her eyes trained on the sky and started walking, taking one step at a time, ignoring the sensation of her hair sweeping back and forth against her shoulders.

Clouds drifted across the sky above her, dreamy and far away, even though they looked close enough to touch.

She sometimes wished she was a cloud.

She was about as invisible as one until she cried, and then everyone avoided her, just like they avoided rain.

Meg sighed, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath as she prepared herself to face the day.

She was in her last year of high school, but it had just started, so there were still months and months of torment left to deal with before she could get away, but she'd been saving up money from jobs here and there since she'd turned fifteen, and with it she planned to leave home on her own.

She wouldn't go to college.

She'd applied, but she already knew there would be no good news, since someone like her didn't have a shot at doing anything for the future.

No... she was going to take all the money she'd earned and get out of the state.

She would go someplace out in the middle of nowhere and live by herself, away from the world that hated her, perhaps somewhere in the Colorado mountains... or perhaps the southern part of Alaska, someplace without a lot of people who would laugh at her and torment her.

Shouldering her backpack, Meg continued the twenty minute walk in total silence, only bothering to lower her eyes when she stepped through the gates of her high school. She stopped, taking a deep breath and closing her eyes as she prepared her mind to deal with the horrors of the day, like usual.

"I can do this," she murmured, making her way towards the entrance. "I can do this... just one more year."

With her head held high, she steeled herself and walked forward. Her sneakers squeaked on the linoleum tile, and the sound of chattering students filled her ears, but it was muted.

Muffled, distant.

People walked and stood close enough for her to touch, but they were still so far away from her, out of reach, closer than ever but impossible to touch.

She was surrounded by a crowd, but she was more alone here than anywhere else.

She took one step at a time, numb, lost in her head where nothingness drowned out the impersonal voices and clanging lockers all around her, looking at the numbers above the doors until she found her classroom and paused, staring at the students inside with a blank expression.

 _I can do this,_ Meg silently murmured, observing all ofthe faces in the room. _This shouldn't be too hard... at the very least, not as bad as last week._

Swallowing, she lifted her hands and was about to go inside the room, but someone bumped into her arm and her bag instantly dropped to the floor.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" a skinny black-haired boy sighed, bending down and picking the bag up. "That was my... fault..."

When he looked up and glanced at her face, his expression changed. Wide eyed, all he did was stare at her with an open mouth... but then he snapped his jaw shut and looked away.

Meg lowered her eyes.

So many people reacted the same way, all the time, and blatantly said it was because she was ugly.

They'd called her fat.

They'd called her disgusting.

Everyone did.

So, it had to be true.

Unwanted.

Unloved.

Normal.

Numb yet again, she slowly took the bag from him.

"Thanks," she droned. "I appreciate it."

He rapidly started blinking with frightened brown eyes; looking nervous, he glanced around and hastily walked into the classroom without responding to her gratitude.

His quick departure and lack of response made her feel a bit relieved, since she didn't want to talk to him just as much as he didn't want to talk to her.

Swallowing, she walked inside the classroom behind the boy, ignoring the weight of her backpack, ignoring the stares, ignoring the way the world was hazed off all around her.

There had once been a time where she'd have tried to put her belongings in her locker, but ever since the day someone had gotten her combination number and ruined some of her favorite things during her Sophomore year, she'd taken her backpack with her to each class. In comparison to other stuff, _that_ had actually been pretty mild.

She wished she could go back to that time.

"Wow!" a surprised voice exclaimed. "You're already back in class? So soon?!"

Meg slowly turned around and looked at the girl who'd spoken, already knowing what was coming.

Connie DiMico was the most popular girl at James Woods Regional High School, but honestly, it wasn't really hard for anyone to see why. Unlike Meg, who was freckled, somewhat mousy, and didn't know the first thing about putting on make-up, Connie was blonde, had gorgeous husky blue eyes, and she always looked fabulous.

And in an almost stereotypical manner, she happened to be the captain of the cheerleaders, had outstanding grades, coordinated every major event that went on at school, and her charms were above level nine thousand, so to speak.

Unfortunately, despite having everything she could have ever wanted... she was mean, and spoiled, and she actually hated Meg so much that she'd orchestrated countless events to humiliate and publically destroy her self esteem in an ongoing attempt to stop her from coming to school.

After a few seconds of staring at the blonde girl's sly sneer, she decided to remain aloof: she was so used to the treatment she got each day that brushing it off and acting like it was nothing came without any trouble to her at all.

Instead of being rude, Meg politely inclined her head.

"Hi, Connie," she murmured, forcing a tired smile. "Good morning. How was your weekend?"

The blonde's smirk twitched with a faint spark of irritation, and the two girls standing behind her rolled their eyes, but her smile quickly went back to normal.

"Oh, you know... same old, same old," she giggled, tossing her gorgeous blonde hair; she surprised Meg by holding out her hand with an apologetic expression. "Anyway, sorry about what happened last Friday... I went too far with the teasing. I wasn't expecting the others to get that riled up."

Meg winced and lowered her eyes, expression twisting slightly before she smoothed it out.

Faint flashes of being thrown inside the chemistry lab and into the shelf with the chemicals seared behind her eyes.

She hadn't gotten hurt or anything, but the bottles had all broken, releasing toxins into the air, and she'd ended up passing out since they'd locked the door from the outside. It was only because a teacher had been passing by that she'd gotten out of that one since based on what she'd been told, she could have died.

Connie had planned the whole thing, but she hadn't gotten in trouble because everyone involved had kept it a secret and three members of the football team had willingly taken the fall for her.

They were supposed to be suspended for two weeks, and it wasn't right, but that was why she was the queen bee: people liked her enough to protect her, even if it got them in serious trouble.

"It's... okay, I guess," Meg sighed, giving another weak little smile before she tentatively reached out to shake her hand; the moment she clasped Connie's palm, a sharp pain flashed through her hand and she yelped in surprise. "Ouch! Ow, ow, ow! That hurts! What on earth did you just...?"

She got her answer when she pulled her hand away since it was dripping blood.

"Oh, ew! You're bleeding!" Connie gasped in a mocking voice. "Be careful, Fat ass! You don't want to get anyone sick with AIDS, do you?"

She turned to smirk at her friends when they burst into laughter and high-fived each other.

Meg whined inaudibly, looking at her hand and going pale with horror when she realized there was something sticking out of it. With a grimace, she gripped the edges of whatever the hell it was and jerked it out of her palm; fire seared through her nerves, but then it was over and something metal landed on the ground. Swallowing, she bent over to touch it, blinking behind her glasses.

"Is this a... a razor?"

Her heart seized when the blonde stomped on her hand and she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming in pain.

"It's a gift!" Connie giggled, viciously digging her heel into Meg's knuckles. "We all hope you put it to good use, so do us a favor and slit your wrist!"

"Connie..."

"Oh, shut up. You're an eyesore, _Meg,_ " Connie sneered, glaring down at her. "Why the hell did you come back, you ugly freak?"

"Because," Meg whispered, trying to detach herself the pain in her hand. "I need to finish High School."

"Ugh, just drop out, bitch. Nobody wants you here!" Connie sweetly told her, then laughed loudly and turned with a nasty expression on her face. "Right everybody? Shouldn't Meg just drop out?!"

She winced when when every single student instantly turned to look at her with a hostile expression.

"I can't... drop out," she said softly. "You're hurting me... please get off of my hand."

Connie's eye twitched and her smile finally shifted into a hateful expression, wrinkling her pretty face in an ugly way.

"I'm going to continue tormenting you until you leave school, Meg," she hissed, walking right past her with her friends. "I hate the _'I'm a good and proper Little Miss Innocent_ " act more than your disgusting face. Your family is anything but innocent, and you're just like them. Trash."

Meg waited for a moment, then lifted her hand and looked at her palm, watching as the blood welled up from a place far inside herself,

The cut was actually pretty deep, but not wide enough to be of any real danger, and yet she felt nothing now that Connie was gone

She wondered at that.

Closing her eyes, she hefted her shirt and tore a rip into it, making the blonde stop and turn slightly. Her friends kept going, but all she did was stare out of the corner of her eyes as Meg knelt there on the ground, ripping a long, wide strip out of her pale pink T-shirt all the way around. Connie turned a little bit more, eyeing her exposed stomach with her spiteful blue eyes narrowed until she finished tying the strip of cloth around her hand and lowered her arms. When she rose to her feet, the torn hem of the t-shirt dropped back down to her pockets, obscuring her belly.

Clenching her fist to stop the bleeding, Meg looked around the room to see the glares of thirty six hostile teens drilling holes into her face, but she felt next to nothing as they stared at her with malice.

"Move it, lard ass!" a tall blonde boy snapped, shoving her out of the way and sending her stumbling into a desk. She clutched it with no expression, letting out a long sigh.

 _Why can't this ever be easy?_ she wondered.

Straightening back up, she turned to head over to her desk but paused when she found herself staring right into yet another boy's condescending brown eyes. Only, she knew this person.

He was a linebacker for the football team, one of the meanest bullies in her class... and worst of all, the boy who'd lived right down the road from her family's house since she'd been a small child.

Jared Alister.

"Why are you still here, Meg?" he asked in a sardonic baby voice. "I'm beginning to think you _like_ being bullied! Is that it? Are you a masochist? Is that what gets you off? Being abused?"

Meg felt an unexpected lump form in her throat when he dropped the tone and laughed with his friends.

Jared had been picking on her since her second year of middle school, but she'd known him since long before that so she was all too familiar with his tactics and the way he operated. He was a total backstreet kind of guy, the sort of person who skipped school, wore leather biker jackets and wife beaters, and catcalled women on the sidewalk.

But, despite being a total asshole and having such a nasty personality, he was extremely handsome.

With his strong jaw, angular nose, jet black hair, and exotic dark brown eyes, he actually had a very roguish face that might have had potential for big-time modeling if he hadn't been such an asshole.

And somehow, even with that nasty personality of his, he was _popular_... he was the guy that all the girls wanted to date, the guy that all the other boys wanted to be friends with, and the guy that Connie Richardson herself had a claim to.

After all, it was no secret that the two of them were dating each other. He was one of the hottest boys in school, _and_ a football player, so it was only natural that Connie had pursued him.

"I need to finish my senior year, Jared," she quietly explained, ignoring his scowl. "I have to."

"Don't you feel embarrassed with yourself?" he demanded with a sneer. "It's easy to understand why you get the shit beat out of you... the Griffins are a fucking disgrace to this community. Even after everything that happened with Connie... after everything your family has done to the people around here... you have a lot of fucking nerve to show your ugly face here every single day."

"Sorry," Meg said a little coldly. "I didn't get to choose my parents. Please don't blame me for what _they_ do. I can't stop them."

Everyone in the room instantly turned to look at her with disbelieving eyes, but Jared smirked and merely glanced at a few of his buddies; all four of them began whispering.

"We think you should go," one of the boys snapped, staring at her with narrowed eyes. "We don't like your attitude."

"What...?" Meg asked, feeling a little unnerved when several of them started to converge on her; she started backing up as they advanced. "What are you doing?"

She jumped when her back bumped against the window.

"Aww... isn't that sweet, Meg?" Connie cooed, smirking from her desk as the boys surrounded her. "They're helping you leave!"

"B-but... hey, stop!" Meg cried, flailing when all four of them grabbed her. "Let go of me! RIGHT NOW!"

She gasped when they lifted her into the air.

"Ugh, she's heavy!" one of them muttered. "God damn... she really IS a fat ass!"

"Put me down!" Meg wailed, struggling to get her feet back on the ground. "Let go! What do you think you're doing?!"

"We're helping you leave!" Jared jeered. "Bye bitch!"

With that, all four of them heaved her towards the window at the same time.

Meg's eyes went blank and silence filled her ears, and there was even a moment of pleasant floating where things didn't feel real.

Then she broke through the glass and let out an earsplitting shriek of terror and pain.

She landed roughly on her side and rolled to a stop, glasses flying off her face. For a long moment, she lay still, shoulder stinging badly and body aching from the drop.

"Owww..." she wheezed, shakily pulling herself to her knees and clutching her bleeding arm.

She felt the wind blowing through her dark hair and realized that her beanie had gotten caught on the glass when she'd hit the window; everyone was laughing at her from the classroom and pointing fingers, but she hardly noticed. Squinting at the damage done to her shoulder, she ascertained that it was only a small cut and sighed before lifting her eyes to look at the students pointing fingers.

Brown hair lifted off to the side by the breeze, she gazed up at them with nothing more than a tired expression since all she could see were blurry images without her glasses, anyway.

Meg clutched her arm and held it tightly to staunch the bleeding for a few seconds, then carefully stood up and wobbled her way over to the window, standing up on the tips of her toes to snag her hat.

After putting it back on her head, she stumbled towards the entrance to the school.

It took her roughly ten minutes just to get back to class, and by then, the first warning bell had rung, but when she walked into the room and turned to her move towards desk, she halted because it was no longer where it should be.

She looked around the room in confusion and spotted a few girls glaring at her and snickering with subliminal messages, but she didn't even have the energy to tell them off.

She merely lowered her head and sighed.

Her teacher wasn't back... thankfully.

"Hey, if you're looking for your desk," Connie sweetly called, making her look up. "It should be somewhere around the school."

Meg took a deep breath before she deflated; then, without saying a word, she stumbled out of the room again, jogging lightly as she went down the halls, looking for her desk with tired eyes.

She had a feeling that they'd most likely done something outrageous to it, but she would soon see regardless. After running up a flight of stairs with her hair bouncing around, she found her desk.

It was being stared at by two confused freshmen.

"Who's desk is it?" one of the boys asked. "Is there anything inside with a name?"

"Let's just throw it outside," the other boy replied. "Teachers can take care of it."

"Wait!" Meg called, panting heavily as she skidded to a halt; she looked up at them with calm eyes. "That's... mine."

"No way!" the first boy laughed, sneering at her in surprise. "It belongs to Megan Griffin?"

"The idiot's daughter?" the second boy asked in surprise, glancing at her face with raised eyebrows. "Damn... who would have thought an ugly couple like him and his wife could have a daughter who looks so- "

The first boy smacked a hand against his mouth, face going bone white.

"Yeah, right?!" he laughed, voice coming out high and shrill. "I mean seriously, isn't she an ugly fat ass?"

Meg lowered her eyes, heart squeezing, and picked up her desk before hesitantly befoing away, but when just as she was about to turn and go, she bumped into someone and froze.

Her dark hair spun with her due to its partial confinement as she whirled around, but when she found herself staring into the frigid amber eyes of Mike Pulaski, the very boy who'd once challenged her to a fight in her sophomore year, she froze up like a marble statue.

During that fight, she'd gone somewhere inside her head.

She'd given herself an imagined victory, something outrageous... disgusting... to keep from feeling it. Inside her head, she'd envisioned kissing him to disgust him, and had then imagined popping a zit on his face before lifting her shirt. She had pictured watching him spontaneously combust into a puddle of human remains... and then had imagined everyone cheering for her.

In her head, everything had finally turned around.

But in truth, outside of it, she'd been beaten black and blue by a boy roughly twice her size.

And for weeks after, she had been in pain.

His eyes narrowed and he glared down at her with disgust on his face; she shrank back a little and fearfully averted her eyes, recognizing the look as the one he'd given her on the day she'd been tripped at lunch and had subsequently spilled her tray of food on him.

"Move, Meg," he commanded in a low voice. "Before I rearrange that ugly face of yours."

She flinched and hastily shuffled to the side, struggling to keep a grip on her desk and chair despite her shaking arms. She watched as the blonde lumbered inside his classroom, but when she turned to walk away, the freshman who'd covered his friend's mouth tripped her.

Meg let out a surprised cry when she lost her balance, struggling to keep a hold on her desk even though it was a futile attempt.

The muffled boy jumped with large eyes when she landed hard on her stomach and bashed her kneecap on when floor, but she managed to keep a straight face despite her watering eyes even when the first boy started laughing at her.

She didn't even notice it when Mike turned to look back at her through the door.

With shaking limbs and a throbbing knee, Meg picked up her chair and desk, carrying them down the stairs towards her classroom, but by the time she arrived the third bell had already rung.

Everyone looked at her when she limped inside.

The teacher glared daggers from behind his pinched little glasses.

"What are you doing?" he demanded harshly. "Not only are you late, I was just informed that you've vandalized school property! That's a serious code of misconduct."

"I'm sorry," Meg murmured weakly, staring at the man with tired eyes. "I didn't..."

She trailed off.

Her shoulders sagged.

Giving in would require less effort than defending herself.

"Office! Now!" the man snapped. "You should have known better, Miss Griffin."

"Yes, sir," Meg said in a raspy monotone. "Sorry for interrupting."

Turning around, she walked out of the room.

Her hands were shaking, but she made her way down to Principal Sheppard's office as bravely as she could.

She was in trouble.

They thought she'd broken the window, which meant her parents would have to spend money.

Hell would be waiting back home.


	4. Chapter 3: Rolling Girl

**Chapter Three: Rolling Girl**

Meg was quiet.

Staring at the ground through her battered glasses, she didn't move a muscle or speak a single word to Principle Sheppard despite his expectant expression. His eyes took in her clumsily bandaged hand and the small bloodstain on her shoulder, then flitted up to her disheveled brown hair and tired eyes. Even though they were half hidden by her hair, she was sure that the bags beneath them made her already pale face seem gaunt.

This wasn't the first time she'd been sent to the headmaster's office, and it wouldn't be the last, but just like all the other times during the last three years of school... for some bizarre reason, all he did was look at her.

He always waited for her to speak rather than say anything.

She'd never really understood why... after all, this was the same man who'd once suspended her brother for having the worst grades in the whole school. Surely she would be expelled due to all the damages done to school property. Even if the incidents hadn't really been her fault, everyone would blame her, and because there wasn't a way to prove her innocence, she would go down in flames.

With a quiet sigh, she finally lifted her eyes, locking them onto her principle's steely gray ones.

Mr. Sheppard had to be around forty years old... he was overweight, and his dark brown hair was shot through with gray... but even though his face looked a little world-weary, his eyes were somehow kinder than most, even when he was looking at _her_.

He also had a good sense of style: the one thing that hadn't changed about him even now, at the start of her last year as a high schooler, was that every single day he wore a new tie.

Today, he was wearing one with piano key designs.

"I like your tie," she finally mumbled.

"Well," Mr. Sheppard murmured, lifting an eyebrow. "I assumed you'd be speaking up soon, but I surely didn't think you'd try ass-kissing."

Meg winced, then looked away, slumping down in the chair a bit.

"I'm not saying I like your tie because I'm hoping to get out of trouble," she sighed. "I'm in big trouble, so what? I still like your tie…"

Hearing that, he grinned and leaned back in his seat, then picked up the paper on his desk.

"You broke a window," he said simply. "The report I was given says you got angry and threw your chair through it."

Meg winced again, then decided there wasn't a point in denying it.

After all, even if she tried to tell the truth, nobody would believe her.

She was _nothing_.

"Yes, I did," she said in a deadened voice. "I... I was angry today, and I... I lost my temper."

The man's eye twitched and he slowly looked down at his desktop, nostrils flaring.

Then, taking a deep breath, he pulled something out of his desk and Meg looked at it when he set it down between them.

A video cassette.

She glanced up at him in confusion to find that he was giving a kind, but very stern look.

"I don't appreciate you lying to me, Megan," he quietly told her, making her blink. "I want to show you something."

Gripping the cassette, he stood up from his desk and walked over to the flat screen television resting on the wall across the room. Flicking it on, he pushed the video tape into the extremely old VCR and pressed play.

The screen flickered a bit with snow... but then, what looked like security camera footage met her eyes. She blinked again when she saw herself standing by the window, backing away from four hulking boys... flailing as she was lifted into the air... then, forcibly thrown through the window.

Everyone crowded around and pointed fingers at her through the broken glass.

Meg went bone white and looked away from the screen when Mr. Sheppard paused it using the remote.

"Many of the students and staff are not aware of this," her principle sighed, rubbing his forehead, "but there are security surveillance cameras everywhere in this school. The only places that aren't under watch are the school bathrooms and the locker rooms. Everyone's parents were informed several years ago, but since this school has students from a relatively small community, there's rarely been a need to rely on the security cameras. But they are indeed there, Miss Griffin."

"I... I..." Meg stammered, slowly shaking her head, "I was... recorded?"

"Yes," he explained, then walked over to a large cabinet and opened it wide; Meg's jaw dropped and she stared, bug-eyed, at all of the videos stacked up on the shelves. "I have four years' worth of security footage, as well as videos to go with every single claim that the teachers and students at this school have made against you."

Meg was stunned.

"Why?" she whispered. "Why did you do this?"

He sat down and folded his hands, giving her a very stern expression.

"Because I don't like what's being done to you," he said softly. "It's not right. It's never been right, and it bothers me that you've kept quiet about it for so long. So, what do you want to do?"

She stared blankly, not understanding what he was getting at.

"What do you mean? I don't understand."

"I'm giving you the option to use these videos as a means to file lawsuits against the people who've been hurting you," he explained, making her twitch. "I was told by your teacher that you got into a verbal fight with Connie DiMico, smashed a window because of it, and ran off in a temper all before he'd arrived. Due to a stern disagreement we had on behalf of your innocence, he demanded that I take a look at the security footage, so I agreed to do so and dismissed him."

"Wait, so... you mean..."

"Indeed," he confirmed, leaning forward with a sharp expression. "I saw what those children did to you, and I've had enough of it. If you choose to file a lawsuit against our school, I'll back you as a witness."

Looking up at the screen displaying her torment, Meg stared at the frozen image.

Noticing her gaze, he pressed the rewind button on the remote.

The images began to flash backwards, rewinding over unseen security footage. Meg instantly felt cold inside since the video only contained shots and camera angles of _her_. She saw herself being locked in the science lab on her first day as a Senior and nearly choking to death on the chemicals in the air... then, footage of the bullying from the end of last year.

She saw more places, more camera angles.

Being pushed around in the halls and having people violently pull her hair and drag her around by it, shoving her to the ground, tearing her books out of her hands, spitting on her, being smashed against the lockers, having things thrown at her during gym, and being hurt repeatedly by everyone in her class... over, and over, and over again.

In so many ways.

All she could do was stare at the images flashing across the television, watching the horrors that had befallen her since the day she'd first enrolled.

When the images zoomed in on her struggling to work hard despite having people spitting on her and her desk in class, she winced.

More footage showed her crying alone in an empty classroom, and she stiffened a bit since she actually remembered that day.

Last year, near the end of the summer, she'd hidden in one of the girl's bathrooms after the final bell to escape detection since she hadn't wanted to go home. She'd been regretting apologizing to her family for going off on them about the way they'd been treating her for so long.

Things had gotten too unpleasant for her to handle, and around that time of her life, she'd been secretly spending her afternoons hiding at school.

That day, while she'd finally been on her way outside, she'd passed by her own classroom... and, for whatever reason, she'd walked over to her desk. Sat down in it, looked at the dry erase board, wondered what her school life might have been like if people hadn't hated her, and before she'd known it she'd burst into tears without warning, just like she always did whenever she was alone.

Nobody, not even her own family, had ever cared when she'd started crying, so, she'd simply stopped doing it in front of them.

Crying alone was better than being sneered at by the people who were supposed to love her.

Mr. Sheppard watched her with a stoic expression when she leaned back with a lump in her throat, shoulders sagging. Everything that had been done to her at school... it had all been recorded. Even the other times when she'd stayed behind and broken down into raw, agonized tears.

The sights before her flashed across her glasses: crying... crying... crying... at the end of each day, despite how expressionless she'd looked while enduring the bullying, she'd been caught crying.

Every single day.

Swallowing the bile that rose up her throat, she turned and looked at her principle.

"I don't understand," she croaked. "Aren't you... aren't you going to call my parents? I mean, the window... I'm supposed to be in trouble..."

"The window was broken by your classmates," the man snorted, folding his hands and leaning forward with a firm grey gaze, "and although I haven't informed their parents about it just yet, mark my words, they will be held responsible. Unfortunately, because of how many students were involved with this incident, I'll need to start planning for a school conference between myself and the parents, and it won't be happening for quite a long while."

Meg felt dazed.

"You're being serious," she whispered. "You're really going to defend me?"

He smiled warmly, something that caught her off guard since she was almost never smiled at by people.

"I'm very good at my job, Miss Griffin," he sniffed. "As of right now, you aren't in any trouble... and no, I won't call your parents. I've had dealings with your father and mother before, and I have some ideas about what might be going on in that home of yours. I won't add any unnecessary stress."

Meg was shocked into silence.

"I don't know what to say," she admitted, hooking a strand of hair behind her ear. "Um... thank you."

"You may go now," he told her, smiling broadly when she hunched her shoulders up to her ears. "Also, stop and see nurse Anna so she can take a look at your shoulder. After that, you can go back to class. I've already sent an email to your teacher explaining that you are not the one to blame and that I'm highly disappointed in his rash, unethical conduct. Remember what I said, though... think on what you want to do."

"Okay," Meg murmured, slowly standing up and hefting her backpack. "Um... thanks."

Dazed, she left the office and headed towards the infirmary, and upon walking in, the woman sitting at a desk in the corner of the room looked up.

Her blue eyes widened when she saw the blood on Meg's shoulder.

"Oh, dear!" she squeaked, leaping up and frantically hurrying over. "What on earth happened to you?"

"Glass," Meg explained, avoiding her eyes. "It's a long story."

"Take off your shirt and let's get you cleaned up," the woman sighed, clucking her tongue as she walked over to grab a first aid kit. "Children these days..."

Annabelle McClaren, the school nurse, was among the few people working at school who treated Meg normally.

Plus, she really was a beautiful young woman, all things considered... creamy skin, dreamy blue eyes, platinum blonde hair with just the right amount of messiness, and a breathtaking smile. On top of that, she had a gorgeous figure, super long legs, and a very refined manner of speech.

She looked, for all the world, like a barbie doll, and compared to a pasty, pudgy, extremely undersized freak like Meg, she literally shone like the sun.

After taking off her beanie and pulling her torn pink shirt over her head, she sat down on one of the beds and self-consciously covered her middle with a downcast expression.

Anna, however, paid her repulsive figure no mind and began to clean the cut.

"Ouch!" Meg squeaked, wincing as she dabbed at the cut with a swab of alcohol. "That stings!"

"I know it does, but you'll be fine," Nurse Anna murmured, looking up at her; after a moment, however, her gaze dipped lower and she examined her arms with a blink. "Why are you holding your stomach? Do you have a belly ache, too?"

Meg stared at her glumly.

"I'm fat and ugly," she explained, hunching her shoulders with an ashamed expression. "I... don't want you to see it."

The woman's brows shot into her bangs and her mouth fell open, but then, a laugh escaped her lips, startling Meg into glancing up.

"Oh, that's a good one," Anna cackled, shaking her head. "Drop your arms honey... it's okay."

Meg hesitantly did as she was told, letting her arms fall to her sides.

"See?" she rasped, flushing bright red. "I'm... I'm..."

She couldn't even finish her sentence.

The woman looked at her waist-line, then lifted her eyes to her chest and smirked.

"You're what?" she cheerfully asked, folding her own arms with a slightly disbelieving expression. "Enviously petite?"

Meg blinked, not comprehending what she'd just heard.

"Enviously... petite?" she asked, staring at the blonde woman with blank eyes. "What do you mean?"

"You've lost a lot of weight since your second year of high school, Ms. Griffin," Anna sighed, giving her a look. "Honestly, I was worried about it for a while since I received word from a student that she thought you were becoming bulimic, and about halfway through the year, when we had our second physical exam, I was stunned by how much weight you'd dropped off within such a short time. In all my years, I've never seen anyone lose ninety eight pounds that quickly without developing Anorexia."

"No way," Meg retorted, instantly looking down at herself before frowning; she didn't really notice any changes... then again, she also hadn't really looked at her figure in a long time. "I don't believe it."

"Then step on the scale and see for yourself," Anna chuckled, putting some gauze on her arm before waving her over. "Come on. Don't be shy."

Meg was hesitant.

The last time she'd stepped onto one of these things, she'd been fourteen years old. Her weight at the time had been two hundred and thirty-three pounds, and memories of being called fat and disgusting by her family resurfaced.

Nervously standing stock still in the middle of the room in nothing but her bra, she looked at the school nurse with hesitant eyes before glancing down at the scale.

Against her better judgment, she stepped forward until the soles of her sneakers pressed against the scale, but she closed her eyes.

In the last four years... she could have only gained weight.

Losing weight was impossible for her.

Her father had screamed it into her face over and over again when she'd been sixteen, so she couldn't have lost weight, it was impossible.

"Oh, my," Nurse Anna murmured, making her heart drop with resignation. "You've lost even more weight since the last time. Are you truly eating healthy, Ms. Griffin? Be honest, please."

"I don't eat very much in the mornings," Meg admitted, swallowing hard. "I eat a lot at lunch and dinner time, though."

She hesitantly opened her eyes and looked down at the numbers, but all she could do was stare. Lifting her glasses and furiously rubbing her eyes just to make sure she wasn't seeing things, she leaned down towards the scale and peered at it more closely. Her face went blank with disbelief.

Turning, she looked at the nurse, who was frowning.

"Is this a joke?" Meg asked, not thinking it could be true. "Am I on candid camera or something?"

"Of course not," the woman snorted, frowning at her. "Why would you think so?"

"Because," Meg retorted, shaking her head. "There's no way I can be a hundred and fourteen pounds! It's not possible!"

And it wasn't... it wouldn't have made sense... but according to the nurse, and the scale...

"Let me feel your stomach," Anna told her, moving forward and tentatively lifting her arms; Meg held her breath when the woman's fingers gently pressed in specific places along her belly, moving around to her sides and waist. After a moment, her brows raised and she nodded before pulling back. "Well, you're obviously eating healthy, and there's no sign of any surgery... color me impressed."

"No way... I'm really a hundred and..."

Right around that moment, the lunch bell rang, making the woman look up.

"Well, it's lunch time," Anna sighed, rolling her shoulders. "Make sure to take care of yourself in the future, okay? And if you ever want to talk, you know where my office is."

Meg wordlessly nodded, then slid her shirt back on, still unable to process what was going on around her. Not bothering to look back, she hefted her backpack and left the infirmary, heading for the school rooftop.

Every day at lunch, she would hide up here and eat her brown-bagged food by herself since it was isolated from everyone, and as a plus, nobody really came up here despite the fact that it was allowed by the faculty.

Walking out into the open air with haunted hazel eyes, she sank down against the rooftop wall and stared at the sky, coughing slightly as the abrupt smell of smoke hit her nose.

 _I'm stepping on Dad's scale when I get home,_ Meg silently told herself. _If she was lying, or playing a mean joke... at least then, I'll know._

She coughed again when the scent of smoke intensified. At first she was able to ignore it, but eventually she started hacking up a lung.

After a few more moments of coughing like a maniac, Meg finally rubbed her stinging eyes and turned to look around the corner, but the moment she saw Michael Pulaski staring at her with his piercing amber eyes, she gasped and drew her head back with her heart in her throat.

 _What is he doing here?!_ she silently wailed. _This place is usually abandoned!_

 _"_ Hey, Beanie Girl," his deep voice growled, making her twitch and huddle down. "Do you hide here during because you don't want to get bullied by everyone? You're never in the cafeteria anymore."

Meg swallowed, wondering why her luck was so bad.

"I... just like eating up here," she croakes. "It's quiet, and peaceful. I've been doing it since..."

She trailed off and clamped her jaw shut because _he_ was the reason she'd stopped eating lunch in the cafeteria. Ever since the day he'd beaten her up, she'd completely avoided eating around other people at school.

Hell, for the most part, she didn't even grab things from the lunch ladies anymore: she brought her lunch with her from home to avoid coming into contact with anyone.

"So," he drawled, making her shiver, "let me ask you somethin', Beanie Girl... are you still scared of me?"

She didn't know how to respond, but she decided to be honest, even if it got her in trouble.

"Yeah," she said in a detached tone. "Who wouldn't be scared of the guy that put them in the hospital?"

Silence came from around the corner.

Meg numbly stared at the sky, gazing sightlessly at the drifting clouds, withdrawing into her own head.

"You were taken to a hospital?" he asked, voice coming out abnormally dark despite the faint undertone of confusion in it. "I didn't... hurt you _that_ bad, did I? I mean, after all that crap went down, I got suspended for a week and that's all. My dad didn't get a phone call from your folks or anything, so I figured you were fine."

Meg snorted in grim amusement and bitterly drew her knees up to her chin, wrapping her arms around them.

"I had four broken ribs, a punctured lung, and you fractured both of my arms in different places," she quietly told him. "I was out of school for more than two weeks."

"Tch, liar," he snorted, sounding a little pissed. "If that's the case, why the hell didn't your folks come screaming for a lawsuit?"

A breeze swept across the roof.

Meg let her head thump back against the wall.

Brown hair brushing against her cheeks, she stared off at nothing with a hazed expression.

"They didn't care," she said, voice coming out colder than she'd expected it too. "My injuries were covered by my insurance. They didn't have to pay anything, so for them, it was like there wasn't even a problem. I heard later that while I was laid out in the hospital, my dad actually threw a party since I wasn't at home."

When she let out a humorless laugh, another, much longer silence came from around the corner, but then his shadow obscured her form and she looked upto see him staring down at her with an intense frown, blonde hair ruffling slightly in the breeze.

"Are you fucking with me?" he demanded, cracking his knuckles and quirking an eyebrow when she froze. "If you are, you're dead! Tell me the truth or I'll beat the shit out of you again, _Meg_!"

Her heart seized.

"I'm telling the truth!" she protested, frantically shaking her head. "I am! I swear!"

"Are you?!" he sneered, leaning down. "Because what I just heard sounds like a load of horse shit!"

"It's true!" Meg shouted, face twisting up. "You just don't get it!"

"You're right, I don't," he snapped, making her flinch. "You were being pushed around even before I transferred here! If I were you, I would have left this school a long time ago. You should just go home."

In an instant, without warning, she snapped and fury roared throughout her chest.

Every now and then this anger would surface, quick and unexpected, but completely uncontrollable.

Smacking her bag against the ground and standing up, she clenched her fists and glared up at him.

"Go home?! Go HOME?!" she screeched, making him back off a step with a surprised look. "WHAT'S YOUR DEFINITION OF HOME, HUH?! There's no difference between the treatment I get here or there, at all! It's the same either way! At least at school, I know there's an excuse since bullies are fucking EVERYWHERE, but home?! That place isn't home, it's HELL!"

She stood there, heaving for breath, face slightly red... but then, her hands unraveled.

The truth of her own words had hit her hard.

Shoulders sagging, her eyes filled with tears that started running down her cheeks before she could stop them. Lifting her hands, she pulled her glasses off and tried to rub them away, but more came out. Mike merely stared at her, looking like he didn't know what to make of what she'd just said... hell, he actually looked pretty uncomfortable.

"So... what are you sayin'?" he demanded, sliding his hands into his pockets. "Your parents... seriously didn't care?"

"Nope," Meg sneered, keeping her voice under control. "To them, not having me around was like having a vacation. At any rate, I'm not going to leave this school until I graduate. I made a deal with my dad: if I can manage to get my diploma, I'll be able to move wherever I want and get the hell away from here."

His brows raised a bit.

"You're dealing with all this shit, just so you can move away?" he asked, not believing his ears. "No way."

Finally managing to reign in her feelings, she dried her eyes and started cleaning her glasses off.

"Believe it or not, it's up to you," she muttered, grabbing her bag and heading for the door. "I'm not the kind of person who gives up. Don't mistake my patience for being docile. I'm not just taking what they're throwing at me. I have my own reasons."

"I have a feeling you're going to leave," Michael drawled, taking another puff of his cigarette. "Just sayin'."

"You're wrong," Meg retorted, shaking her head. "I'm going to stay here until the very end of the school year."

"After what I overheard in the locker rooms today, I highly doubt that," Mike snorted, giving her a sarcastic look. "If you can manage staying here for another _month_ , I'll take you out to the movies and tell the whole school it's an official date."

Meg stiffened, hand freezing on the doorknob.

Despite being a bully, and despite being a huge dickhead to everyone around him... Michael Pulaski was one of the most popular boys in her school. He was tall, broad -shouldered, naturally blonde, and had a very handsome face... but even more impressive than that, he was actually an intelligent human being. Meg had been shocked about that. A bully getting straight B's and A's was practically unheard of.

"No thanks," she said, making him scowl. "There used to be a time when I'd have accepted that sort of offer without a second thought, but you're kind of out of luck."

That much, at the very least, was true.

She had bad experiences with things like romance and boys.

Her first crush, a boy named Kevin, had faked his death after going to the army and had, as a result, turned into a pathological lying lunatic with mental issues. Her first _love_ , sad as it was, had been a guy nearly twenty five years older than her... the Mayor of Quahog, Adam West. Until him, she'd had other typically small crushes on boys she'd thought were cute... but, by some chance, she'd ended up working for him as an intern.

He was the first person, in her whole life, who had ever looked at her as someone worthwhile.

He had never looked through her, as if her existence were a passing thought... he had looked _at_ her, seeing her for who she was.

His acceptance had filled a void within her heart that she hadn't even known was there.

But then, Brian had gotten involved... and because of his actions, distance had formed between her and Adam. She had held onto the hope, day in and day out, that he still loved her... that he would remember his promise to wait until she was eighteen to get her out of the hell she called a home, and cherish her to make up for all the years of hate and abuse she had been put through.

But it had never happened.

The next time she'd seen Adam had been during the week her Aunt Carol had come to visit.

And he had forsaken Meg for Carol.

She could remember that night so clearly that the memory still wounded her... pretending to smile at Adam and her aunt, trying to be happy for them... but later, after her father's typical drama had sent everyone into a frenzy, she had been left alone at the table. Wondering whether or not everything he'd ever said to her had been a lie.

But the misfortune hadn't ended there, oh no!

After all, only a few months ago, the day after her eighteenth birthday, Glenn Quagmire had approached her. It had been completely unexpected since a man she'd known her whole life had abruptly attempted to make her feel... _cherished._ For two weeks, he'd acted as though he'd been waiting for her to grow up just so he could show her that she could be _loved_. Glenn had been one of her father's closest friends since before she'd been born, too.

He'd known just how fucked up her living situation was, had known about the extent of her problems at school, he had even known about all the online harassment she'd been suffering though, from the petition with more than thousand votes on Facebook to kill herself, to all the nasty things people said about her on their public walls, he'd known everything and had used her own weaknesses to his advantage.

And because of that, she'd almost made a huge mistake.

She'd almost slept with him.

If it hadn't been for her father, who'd surprised _both_ of them by barging in, she wouldn't have known the truth.

She wouldn't have known that he hadn't really meant any of the things he'd said to her.

In his own words, she was a female: an object he could sleep with.

Nothing more.

Gleen Quagmire had KNOWN what he'd been planning on doing to her was cruel beyond words... but he hadn't cared, and he'd abruptly lost interest in her when she'd refused to sleep with him.

Since that day, she'd given up on having things like dates, or crushes, or anything that had to do with romance.

Forget friends. Forget love. Forget everything.

Michael stared at her quivering shoulders, brows furrowed slightly.

"Fine," he sneered, tilting his head back. "If you make it _two_ months, I'll become your bodyguard and prevent anyone from bullying you for the rest of the year."

THAT caught her ear.

Whipping around, she looked at him with a startled expression.

"Seriously?" Meg scoffed. "Are you joking?"

"I don't lie," Mike retorted, looking up at her with a condescending expression. "We got a deal?"

She was stunned into silence for a moment, but when he sneered past the cigarette in his mouth, his bargain finally clicked and a huge grin slid across her face. In a fit of daring courage, she looked down at the nicotine-ridden object with a smug expression; then, with dainty movements, she plucked it right out of his mouth and crushed it under her left foot, ignoring how he jumped to his feet.

"Hey!" he angrily bellowed. "The fuck was that for?"

Meg merely stared at him with a rare smile.

"It was for mocking me," she chimed, pushing her glasses up her nose. "We have a deal, Mike. Don't forget what you just said to me."

"If you can pull off getting through the scale of bullying headed your way," he snorted, "I can definitely pull off being your bodyguard."

Meg nodded at him before she turned and left the roof, walking through the door.


	5. Chapter 4: Fissures

**Chapter Four: Fissures**

As Meg headed down the stairs, she pulled out her lunch and hastily ate her sandwiches before sipping on her juice, trying to finish her food in the short amount of time she had left.

By the time she finished, she'd made it to class and the bell was about to ring. After making her way inside, she tossed her lung bag in the trashcan and turned to head to her desk, but she halted in the doorway since there was a ton of garbage on it.

Connie, who was leaning against the wall, smiled.

"I figured you would have been sent home," she said sweetly. "Since you weren't, we decided to give you a welcome back present."

Keeping her face blank, Meg neutrally began picking the garbage up and told herself that it wouldn't be this way forever, but the moment she took her eyes off the students who were sniggering all over the room, someone dumped an entire wastebasket over her head.

Meg squeaked, shoulders stiffening as she was covered in garbage.

Shivering a little, she unballed her fists and jerked the trashcan off of her head, and after shaking her hat and her hair free of the filth that had been dumped onto it, she turned around to see one of her classmates smirking at her.

"Why?" she asked, squatting down and picking up the garbage around her.

"What do you mean, _why_?" he asked innocently, blinking at her in mock surprise. "You're the trashcan now because I said so! Therefore I can throw garbage on you whenever I want, and you can't complain about it! Hey everyone, from now on, Meg Griffin is the classroom garbage so feel free to use her!"

Meg grit her teeth and angrily continued picking everything up, then swept the crud off her desk into the bin.

When she picked the wastebasket up and tried to carry it over to its usual spot, someone tripped her, and being the klutz that she was, she fell flat on her face and the trash went the flying out of her hands.

Unfortunately, the bin hit the teacher in the face just as he walked into the room.

"Oh, no!" Meg whispered, eyes widening in horror. "M... Mr. Smith! I'm so sorry!"

"You'd dare to do something so violent?" the man asked in a low voice, plucking a banana peel off his blazer and glaring from behind his glasses. "Starting from today, you're going to be cleaning the bathrooms for a month! And since you obviously have no respect for your teachers OR this school, you can go get started."

"Huh?" Meg asked. "What about the rest of class?"

"You can take home what we do for the rest of the day as added homework," he sniffed, curling his lip. "Now, go."

Swallowing when the muffled laughter kicked up again, Meg git to her feet and headed for the door without another word, head lowered.

After grabbing the cleaning supplies from the main office and heading for the bathrooms, she busied herself.

The next two hours were spent cleaning in total silence, but even though time was passing her by, Meg's bitter mood refused to lessen up at all. By the time she was almost finished, the final bell had long-since rang. She finally started mopping up the floors with a sigh, since it was the last thing she needed to do before she could leave, but just as she was going over the restroom floor with the wax, Connie and two other girls walked in.

"Meg... we're sorry," Connie said with a soft expression, catching her completely off guard. "It must have been tough cleaning all five of the school's female restrooms by yourself, so we decided to come help you with the rest of it."

"Um, thanks," Meg murmured, blinking in surprise, "but I've almost finished all of them."

"Is that so?" Connie asked, grabbing the mop clean out of her hands and intentionally kicking the water bucket over. "Oopsies!"

Meg's mind immediately started screaming at her in silent rage, scolding her for letting down her guard again.

This girl was, after all, the same one who'd stuck a razor in her hand that morning and had laughed while her friends had thrown her through a glass window.

"Please give me the mop," Meg stammered, stepping forward and holding out her hand.

"Shut up!" one of the girls sneered, shoving her. "Fat ass!"

Meg stumbled and unexpectedly slipped on the floor, and the next thing she knew, she'd cracked her head against the tile, almost knocking herself out.

Connie laughed when the two girls dragged her into a bathroom stall by her arms; then they ran out and slammed the door shut. The sound of something scraping against the wood caught her attention.

Dazed and seeing stars, Meg pushed on the stall door to find that it was jammed.

"Hey!" she cried, eyes widening as common sense came back to her. "H-hey! Let me out!"

"Since you don't want to leave school," Connie taunted from the other side, "you can spend the night in here!"

"Open the door!" Meg shouted, pounding on the door with both fists. "Let me out of here, Connie!"

"Oh, yeah, and supposedly there's a ghost in this part of the school," the blonde added snidely. "If you're lucky you'll be able to see her! Either way, I hope you enjoy sleeping in here! Have a good night, _Meg_!"

The sound of laughter and a closing door followed her words; then there was the click of a lock.

"Come back here and open the door right now!" Meg screeched. "Seriously!"

Not long after that, the lights unexpectedly went out, casting the windowless bathroom in total darkness. Meg flinched and immediately huddled against the toilet.

"I can't see anything," she whispered, stretching her arms out and touching the stall door. "Not even my arms."

Trying to figure out how to get out of the bathroom that didn't involve crawling on the floor and soaking herself in dirty water, she felt around for the toilet before climbing on top of it. Wobbling slightly, she gripped the edge of the bathroom stall and with careful movements, hauled herself up and slipped over to the other side.

She knew she'd gone the right way when she heard the sound of water under her shoes.

Holding her arms out, she cautiously made her way towards the wall and felt around for the bathroom door; when she touched the handle, she sighed in relief... but that relief was extremely fleeting, because the handle refused to budge when she attempted to turn the knob.

Meg pulled and struggled until it hit her.

They'd locked her in.

She kicked the door in frustration before she made her way over to the sinks and leaned against the wall.

Being careful to avoid the water around her, she slid down to the floor and buried her face in her knees, completely drained of energy. As she sat there, a scratching noise suddenly echoed through the bathroom from the direction of the door.

Meg's blood froze and she jumped before looking around with large eyes, heart practically flying through the roof: she didn't want to admit it to herself, but Connie had really rattled her nerves with her claim of a ghost lurking around the school.

She wasn't exactly a paranormal nut-case, but she had gone through enough inexplicable weirdness to have a firm belief in spirits and ghost-related things. There had been a few times when she had dreamed she'd seen Death himself. They'd been some very bizarre dreams indeed, but those particular experiences... real or not... had made her very jumpy when it came to paranormal activity.

Meg's heart leapt into her throat and she held her breath when a rattling noise filled the bathroom.

She felt goosebumps rising on her arms and neck when the rattling increased, but when the door slowly creaked open and a beam of light fell across her when, Meg's breath hitched in terror.

A silhouette with disheveled hair slowly peered into the black and tilted its head to the side in an odd manner; the only thing she could see in the entire form were two large eyes that stared directly at her.

Then the figure raised its arms.

Meg went nuts.

"NOOOOOOO!" she screeched, jerking her hat down over her eyes with both hands. "NO! NO, NO, NO! GO AWAY!"

"Merciful heavens!" the silhouette shrieked, jumping nearly a foot in the air. "Dear Lord... Meg Griffin, is that you sitting against the wall over there?!"

That voice... she knew that voice.

"N-n-n-nurse Anna?!" Meg stammered, heart thudding violently. "Oh, my God... you scared me to death!"

"I think it's the other way around, kiddo," the woman sighed, taking a deep breath of relief before letting it out and shaking her head. "I heard some weird noises coming from the bathroom and came to look around a little, but I wasn't expecting to hear you scream like that! What on earth are you doing in here?""

"I got locked in," Meg explained, feeling thoroughly confused. "I thought everyone had gone home."

"Nope," the woman laughed, shaking her head. "Dear Lord, you sure are lucky I found you..."

Getting to her feet and grabbing her backpack off the sink-inlaid counter, Meg stepped around the puddles of water and walked into the hall. The blonde woman looked at the mess on the bathroom floor, then rolled her eyes and shut the door. Pulling a set of keys out of her pocket, she locked it with a sigh.

"What about the mess?" Meg asked, making the woman chuckle. "Is it okay to leave it there?"

"We have janitors for a reason," Anna explained, giving her a half-lidded look. "Someone will clean it. You just head home."

"Okay... still, thanks," she sighed, giving the woman a small smile. "I'm going now."

Little did meg know that on the counter where her bag had been was her diary.

In the end, however, it wouldn't matter... because that night is when it happened.

The incident that changed things forever.


	6. Chapter 5: Flash bang

**Chapter Five: Flash... Bang**

After getting home from school that day, Meg went upstairs to her room to put her backpack away... but then, she made a beeline for the bathroom and simply stared at the scale, feeling nervous and apprehensive. Eyes devoid of their reflective sheen, she took her shoes off and hesitantly stepped on the electric scale.

The numbers flashed... then, one hundred and fifteen.

Her eyes widened behind her glasses.

She stepped off the scale, then stepped on again, mouth falling open when the same numbers met her eyes.

Then she repeated the process, stepping off and back on.

As she did so, Brian came into view with Stewie sitting on his back: the two of them stared at her, watching as she practically danced back and forth with how quickly she jumped on and off the scale, then the child muttered something that the dog nodded to, giving a small bark.

However, when she unexpectedly broke into a broad grin, they stared.

"I... I'm really a hundred and fifteen pounds?" she whispered, lifting her hands as she flushed in delight. "No way... no way!"

"You?" Brian barked; the deep robotic voice made her jump and turn. "You can't be that thin."

"I am! Look!" she exclaimed, lifting her shirt; the dog cringed and turned his head away... but Stewie's eyes widened and he tugged on Brian's ear. When the canine hesitantly glanced at her, his ears flicked straight up in shock. "See? I... I apparently started losing weight a while back! I'm actually... skinny!"

Brian looked at her belly, then tilted his head the way most dogs were prone to when struck with curiosity.

"Skinny or not, you're never getting rid of your third nipple," he barked, making her flinch. "Shut up, Meg."

When Brian continued off down the hall, taking Stewie with him, Meg lowered her eyes to the ground, self-consciously clutching her chest.

 _It's not a third nipple,_ she silently muttered, pressing against a groove resting between her breasts. _It's a bullet scar, you jerk._

Her eyes glazed over as she recalled the day her father had unexpectedly pulled a gun on her.

She'd been in a really good mood when it had happened... she'd gotten a good review on a writing website, she'd aced three of her tests, and a fairly cute boy had actually approached her while she'd been on her way home from school. The two of them had held a decent conversation about music for a good hour, and he'd even given her his actual phone number. She'd found out later that he'd only done it on a dare... but it had still made her feel nice at the time.

Meg had walked into the house and had put her things away like always, then gone into the living room, where her father had been sitting on the couch, slightly turned away from her.

"Hi, Dad," she'd greeted, speaking to him for the first time in a long time.

Before she'd been able to react, he'd lifted his pudgy arm and shot her with a pistol. No warning, no hesitation, he'd just up and shot her in the chest.

After she'd fallen, he had merely looked at her with a slightly disappointed expression since she'd still been breathing, and then he'd walked out of the room, leaving her there on the floor.

She'd lain face-down on the carpet for an hour... struggling to breathe, streaming terrified and agonized tears... she'd thought for the first time in her life that she would die. A part of her had been scared, not ready for it... but mostly, she'd been okay with the concept.

However, when Chris had walked in and seen her lying in a puddle of her own blood, he'd freaked out and called an ambulance. It had taken an extensive amount of surgery to remove the bullet. And for months after that, she'd been bedridden, unable to move or walk. Even after she'd been back on her feet, that scar had remained, and just like the one on her forehead it held a horrible memory.

Unlike her mother, who'd told her she was a mistake... her father's expression had spoken more than any words could have. He hadn't even needed to tell her to shut up... the fact that he'd shot her for simply trying to talk to him had been enough.

Shuddering, Meg walked downstairs.

She peered into the kitchen and sighed when she spotted her father, bantering back and forth with her mother while she worked on making dinner. He was sipping a beer and looked more than a little tipsy, but for the most part, he seemed to be in a decent mood.

"Everyone, supper is ready!" Lois called, turning the stove off and setting the plates on the table before unhooking her apron; after hanging it on the rack, she waited until everyone shuffled into the room. "Tonight it's vegan lasagna!"

"Ooh!" Chris gasped, blue eyes lighting up. "Thanks, Mom!"

"Smells delicious!" Brian barked, watching as Peter put Stewie into the high chair with yet another bored eye-roll. Not long after he was situated, the canine hopped up onto one of the chairs and sat down, tail wagging. "Really delicious."

"Yeah," Meg murmured, smiling at her mother in a halfhearted way. "Thanks for dinner, Mom."

When she sat down, she avoided thinking about how the air grew darker.

They all started eating, but for some reason or another, there was a very strange atmosphere hanging above the dining table... almost as though a storm cloud were getting ready to burst and rain down on them. Only the scrapes of forks and knives against the porcelain china filled the silence of the room... but then, Lois spoke up.

"So… what's new kids?" she asked, looking at her children. "How's your schoolwork coming along, Chris?"

"Alwight," the boy cheerfully exclaimed, speaking through a mouthful of food. "I'm jettink much bwettel."

"Chris, don't talk with your mouth full!" Lois sighed, giving him a dismay look. "Use your manners!"

Chris chewed and swallowed, then sheepishly shrugged.

"Sorry," he mumbled. "I was just excited... I couldn't help it. I got a C minus today in math instead of an F!"

"That's great, Chris!" Brian barked, looking surprised. "How long did it take for that to happen?"

"Well, I tried studying, but it didn't go very well... I couldn't focus," he explained. "My teacher kept yelling at me."

"What about you, Peter?" Lois inquired, looking at the man when he paused. "How's work going?"

"Going pretty good," he admitted. "Today, though some fat guy got stuck on the toilet while takin' a crap and broke the whole thing off the wall. He had to scuttle home like a crab since nobody could pull the toilet off his butt."

Meg muffled a snort and shook her head, since her father came home with the weirdest of stories, but then she recalled seeing a broken toilet beside the garbage can outside and paused.

When it clicked, she winced internally.

"Really?" Lois asked, looking at him with raised eyebrows. "Well, that's interesting. What about you, Brian? Anything new?"

"Nothing much," the dog said, tail wagging. "I've tried my paw at writing again, but it doesn't seem to flow well."

"Don't worry... you'll find an inspiration," Lois chuckled, shaking her head with a smile. "Writing can take time."

When everyone happily went back to eating, Meg decided to share her bit of good news.

"You know?" she tentatively piped up, not lifting her eyes. "Today I discovered that I've lost a lot of weight. I weigh only a hundred and fourteen pounds now."

Forks and knives fell still.

Meg knew she was stupid for trying again... she'd promised herself she was done with it. She didn't want to fit in, didn't want to attempt trying to... but she was unable to keep herself from doing so. Even though she was supposed to be done with it, it was like an addiction: she couldn't stop herself.

"You?" Lois drawled, looking at her in disbelief. "There's no way you're that skinny."

"I didn't think so, either," Meg admitted, then touched her stomach. "I really didn't, but I stood on two different scales... the one at school, and the one in the bathroom. Both of them said the same thing. I've... I've genuinely lost a lot of weight."

"Well," the woman sighed, giving her a sour smile, "that's... good."

The words were more than forced. They were ground out through teeth that didn't want to move.

However, Peter put what everyone was thinking into words, as per usual.

"Shut up, Meg," he said simply. "We're trying to eat."

Thus, dinner resumed and the uncomfortable air returned.

After the dishes were cleared and the table had been wiped down, Meg went outside for a breath of fresh air. Sitting on the porch, she watched as Stewie and Brian padded past her and started playing on the sidewalk. Cars drove past as she sat gazing at the sky, ignoring her brother and the family dog.

Then, in a single instant, it hit her.

Depression.

It was like a creeping wave that wormed and wriggled inside her body, constricting her chest, making her tired and sad and lonely.

She slowly buried her face in her knees and sighed.

All she wanted was to go to sleep and never wake up again. The world would be better without her. People wouldn't have to hate her so much. She could be free of everything.

She'd tried to commit suicide in the past, but had never found the courage to do it. She was scared, so scared, but she hated her life, hated it so much, and yet, fixing it was out of her control.

She couldn't fix it.

She was too scared to fix it.

After all, she was the mistake that needed to be fixed.

The sound of Stewie throwing his ball across the ground entered her frazzled awareness as she sat there. She listened to the noise for a few minutes, then lifted her head, but her eyes widened when she saw Stewie playing in the middle of the street.

Brian, oddly enough, was nowhere to be seen.

Getting to her feet, Meg hurried over to her little brother and lifted him up, carrying him over to the sidewalk despite his flail of protest. She dealt with his little hands smacking her face and tugging on her hair as he threw a fit, but once he was sitting safely on the grass, she squatted in front of him.

He glared at her with eyes that looked more intelligent than they should have for a kid his age.

"Stewie," she said, frowning at him, "playing in the middle of the road is very, very dangerous. There are cars going past that could hurt you. It's not safe, so don't do it, okay?"

He wordlessly kicked her leg and walked off.

She frowned, then stood up.

"Please just stay out of the road," she pleaded, letting out an exasperated sigh. "It's dangerous."

Dusting her jeans off, she walked back over to the porch and sat back down planning on relaxing for a bit longer, but then she saw Stewie.

Arms folded, he was ignoring her warning.

After a good minute of watching him stand there, wondering if it was perhaps some form of rebellion against her instructions, Meg stood up and turned to go inside... but then, the sound of a distant screech echoed into the air, making her stiffen. She slowly turned towards the road and looked in the direction of the sound as it grew louder.

Eyes flicking to and fro, she felt her anxiety rising since the screeches wouldn't stop.

"Hey, Stewie?" she called, looking at him. "Um... please get off the street. It sounds like there's a car coming."

The little boy didn't listen.

He didn't even twitch. He stubbornly remained where he was, back facing her, arms folded. Her heart quivered with a sickening little flutter when a red sports car careened around the corner.

The man and woman inside it weren't paying attention: top down, the two of them were laughing hysterically, and they didn't see him.

Her blood turned to ice.

"Stewie!" she cried, waving her arm. "Stewie, get out of the road!"

He still didn't move.

Arms folded, he refused to get off the street... not even looking at the screeching vehicle driving right at him. Face going white with horror, Meg tore off the porch and ran across her front yard, hair flying.

"STEWIE!" she wailed, sprinting towards him and flailing her arms. "STEWIE, MOVE! PLEASE!"

The sound of screeching tires split the air as the driver finally saw him and stomped on the brakes, and the car horn blared in her ears.

The car... it was going too fast... if it hit him, there was no way he would survive. She couldn't get him out of the way in time... it was impossible... she wouldn't make it... unless...

Unless she did the unthinkable.

In that instant, she made her decision.

She didn't think.

She didn't _stop_ to think.

All she did was let instinct take over.

Her white tennis shoes left the pavement when she dove like a linebacker, shoving the child out of the way, but instead of the solidity she'd been expecting... she felt light plastic.

She watched in muffled confusion as Stewie's head fell off, not understanding what she was seeing... not comprehending what was going on.

 _What...?_ Meg silently asked, mind going numb. _Stewie...?_

By that point, it was too late.

The screech of the tires thundered in her ears, but even as it did, all sound seemed to fade away into a ringing silence. Meg slowly turned her head with a blank expression as time slowed to a near halt.

The echoing screech intensified… the sound of the distant car horn screamed in her ears. Her eyes slowly widened, hair billowing around her cheeks.

For a moment trapped in time, all she could see was a blinding red color, and strands of her own hair glinted in front of her eyes as it caught the sunlight.

Then the screeching sound intensified and a crushing pain smashed into her.

In that moment, her world changed forever.

She lost everything.

* * *

Peter stood up when the sound of Meg's shrill, high-pitched scream filled the air, watching with huge eyes as she rolled across the top of the car... smashing the windshield in before she was tossed into the air like a rag doll.

Time seemed to freeze as the sound of shattering glass and denting metal tore itself into his ears.

For a long moment, she seemed to be flipping in slow motion... glasses flying off her face, hat torn off... brown hair whirling as her arms limply flew out, as if she were reaching for something... but then, she landed on the pavement, hitting the ground neck-first before she went rolling.

Her body tumbled across the ground nearly seven times before it came to a stop on the street behind the damaged red sports car.

After that, several moments of silence reigned free.

Chris, who had been on his way outside, halted with shock on his face, and even Peter couldn't move... several of their neighbors had seen the accident from their windows, and many others had been walking along the sidewalks.

However, not a single person took a single step, for they had been frozen in place by what they had just seen. Not even the wind stirred... it was almost as though time itself had been shocked into stillness.

In that trapped moment of time, there was nothing but total silence.

But then... panic erupted.

"Oh, my GOD!" the woman in the car shrieked, tearing out and bolting over to her. "Oh, God... no... no, no, no!"

"I didn't see her!" the man in the car yelped. "She ran right into the road! Oh, man..."

A few front doors flew open and people came running outside.

There were hysterical shouts as people ran into the street and surrounded Meg's bleeding form, unintelligible words of panic breaking into the air as they knelt around her twisted body. She was lying on the ground, unresponsive to everything.

Hazel syes blank, she stared off at nothing, shuddering violently.

"CALL 911!" someone wailed. "CALL 911!"

Right around that moment, Lois walked outside... but when she saw the commotion, her face went white.

"WHAT HAPPENED?!" she cried, tearing forward before glancing at Peter. "Where is STEWIE?"

Peter didn't respond, stunned as he was by what had just happened. However, when Lois saw her son sitting in front of him and staring at the scene with huge eyes, she looked past them.

The world around the woman suddenly turned grey and she slowly began to hear a rushing noise that drowned out her senses.

She couldn't comprehend what she was looking at.

Red... there was a red smear along the street.

Slowly following that trail of crimson, she felt her stomach flip when she realized the source was hidden by the crowd.

Hastily stepping forward, she pushed through her gathered neighbors, shrugging her way towards the source of the crimson trail, but when she broke through, her eyes widened with a jolt.

Meg.

The brunette was lying twisted on the ground, shuddering violently.

Something came over her then.

Some part of her maternal instinct.

"MEGAN!" Lois choked, instantly squatting down with horrified eyes. "What... what happened?!"

"M... Momm..y..." Meg squeaked, voice coming out as little more than a croak. "Help..."

"Don't worry, you're gonna be fine," the redhead soothed, shakily touching her shoulder; the girl's body was... horrible mangled, and even though the sound of sirens were already filling the air, she was convulsing slightly. "D-don't close your eyes, Meg... stay with awakr!"

"It... hurts..." she wheezed, pupils utterly enormous: she was breathing rapidly, and she seemed to be struggling violently with it. "Mom... I... I can't..."

"You can," the woman snapped, shaking her a bit. "Keep your eyes open!"

"I..." she panted, breathing growing even shallower, "I can't..."

"SHUT UP, MEG!" Lois screeched, clutching her daughter's bloody shirt with shaking fists.

Her daughter slowly turned to look at her, then opened her mouth as if to say something... but her eyes widened. Irises losing their reflective sheen, she struggled, mouth opening and closing. Blood began trickling from her lips like a waterfall as she stared at her mother with a blank expression.

Horrified, the woman shook her a little.

"Meg...?" Lois squeaked, heart going numb; when the girl shuddered again, she shook her harder. "Meg...? Megan?!"

Aside from another terrified look, and more working of her mouth, there was no response.

"MEG!" Chris finally cried, shoving through and looking down at her. "Meg, say something! This isn't funny!"

Still no response.

"MEG!" Lois cried, roughly shaking her body. "SAY SOMETHING!"

She still didn't speak: her eyes were glazed and she looked as though she were losing consciousness.

"MEG!" Chris wailed, falling to his knees and smacking her arms. "MEG! MEG! MEG!"

However, there was no response... no amount of chafing, punching, or smacking had any effect.

Up until this point, Peter had been watching from afar... but he slowly approached, still holding the camcorder in steady hands.

The sound of the ambulance broke through the commotion around them, and the Griffins looked up as two paramedics burst out of the vehicle and made their way toward her body.

"All right people!" one of the men shouted. "Clear a path!"

"She's here!" the other called, sprinting over to where her battered form was lying. Lois fell backwards when the man nearly crashed into her but stared worriedly when he pulled out a pocket light and shone it into Meg's eyes. "Shit... let's get her on the stretcher! She's going into shock."

"What's that supposed to mean?!" Lois squeaked, raising a hand as fear shot through her chest; the two men simply ignored her and pulled out a stretcher. "What's wrong with her?!"

"Hurry," the second man instructed, ignoring her frantic question. "Radio in a call to the hospital. Tell them to have a room in urgent care open and ready."

The Griffins watched as they lifted Meg onto the stretcher and shoved her into the back.

"You!" the first man barked, pointing at Lois, who jumped. "Are you her mother?"

"Y-yes!" she stammered, eyes wide. "I am!"

"Get in!" he instructed, pointing to the ambulance. "We're taking her to Quahog Hospital."

With legs like rubber, Lois hopped into the ambulance and the EMT jumped in with her. Then, the doors shut and the vehicle drove away with the siren on. Peter slowly turned to look at the people they'd been surrounded by, but what held his attention was the red car with the tire-marks and long blood stain stretching behind it.

"I can't believe it..." Brian barked, robotic voice coming out in a stunned manner. "Meg's..."

He didn't finish the sentence.

Nobody did.

All around them, people were staring straight at Peter.

A few of their neighbors had been watching him pull the prank.

And they'd seen everything.


	7. Chapter 6: Bad News

**Chapter Six: Bad News**

It was over.

Everything had gone black... nothingness.

No color.

No light.

No sound.

Nothing but an endless darkness that stretched on endlessly beyond her closed eyelids.

She felt so weak that she couldn't even open them... she could feel herself floating weightlessly within the frigidness of this icy void, could feel the fierce winds lifting her hair away from her bare back... and yet, she couldn't move. Her body was incapable of doing anything. She wanted to open her eyes... she wanted to see where she was, why everything was so cold... why she felt so weightless. But she couldn't... arms drifting limply above her, physical body floating away from the street where she'd landed... she drifted through the dark.

Slowly becoming more comfortable.

The shadowy tendrils fit her like a glove... and a warm one at that: they cradled her in unseen arms and whispered loving things in voices that she couldn't hear. She didn't struggle when the feathery fingers slid over her eyelids and lips, and she may have even smiled a little.

There was no more pain.

No more loneliness.

No more need for the numbing ice to keep the shattered pieces of her heart intact.

Nothing penetrated the silence as she descended further and further into her subconscious. The darkness and silence wasn't frightening; in fact, it was soothing after experiencing so many whirling thoughts and mental traffic jams.

The black was absolute... unending yet solid, and even behind her eyelids she could see nothing and everything stretching before her. Infinite possibilities and dreams awaited her in that void.

However, a tiny light abruptly broke through the darkness and cut through the shell around her like a knife: the crack instantly began to widen and more light spilled through to the blackness, dissolving it, sending her spiraling towards a world full of light and warmth.

A ringing sensation suddenly filled her mind, making her lungs burn.

" _Breathe!_ " a distant voice screeched; another flash made her silent heart thump once again. " _Meg, BREATHE!_ "

" _Megan!_ " someone else shrieked in a muffled tone. " _Meg, can you hear me?! STOP IT! THIS ISN'T FUNNY!_ "

She knew that voice... she knew it like the back of her hand.

Her mother.

 _"Is she gonna make it?_ " a bored male voice asked. " _If she dies, will we get insurance...?_ "

"Peter!" another voice screeched. "For once, SHUT UP!"

"MEG!" the first voice wailed, just as another flash lit up her eyes. "MEG, BREATHE!"

 _Chris?_ Meg silently wondered, looking towards the growing light with confused eyes. _My... brother?_

She thought she felt wetness land on her face.

A flash of confusion touched her as her conscious began to rouse. Slowly, her senses started to wake up. She was still trapped in darkness... although, not as thick of a darkness as before. Instead of feeling weightless, she realized he was lying flat on her back. Something was on her face, and muffled sounds slowly began to fill her ears.

"Thank God!" someone gasped. "She's breathing... she's breathing!"

"Meg!" Chris called. "Meg!"

"Our work isn't done," someone with a deep voice snapped. "Please leave the room! She's still in critical condition."

Meg's eyes slowly flickered open, but the bright lights overhead made her feel like she was going blind. Blurred shadows moved above her, and a mask of some sort was resting on her face. She watched, irises glazed over, as someone knelt down and looked at her face more closely.

"Doctor!" a female voice exclaimed. "Doctor, she's conscious! She's regained consciousness!"

"Anesthetize her," the deep voice barked. "We can't have any mishaps during the surgery on her spine."

"Yes, doctor," the woman murmured. "I'll give her a mild dose right away."

Meg struggled to turn her head, but the moment she moved, agony rocketed throughout her abdomen, although she couldn't feel her legs,

She dazedly watched as the woman leaned down, holding a needle of some sort. The horrible thing poked her shoulder with an awful sting: everything began to blur even further, and sounds slowly began to echo in her ears.

A strangely numb and tingly sensation overtook her senses as she drifted in and out of consciousness.

She caught vague flashes of color here and there... but for the most part, she was out of it.

After several hours of being in this nightmarish half-dream state, things darkened and halls were flashing past. The muffled noises had gone quiet.

Her eyes slowly flickered closed, and she lost consciousness.

 _For the longest time, she heard nothing but an odd ringing noise... but what was it...?_

 _Could it have been a voice...?_

 _Was it wind chimes...?_

 _Or water running...?_

 _Metal... shards...?_

 _Red water... dripping out of a..._

 _The world around her seemed to swirl... it was transparent like an old movie._

 _"What do you mean?!" her mother silently screeched. "That's impossible! Meg can't..."_

 _"It is..." someone whispered, voice threading through her ears._ _"I'm sorry, Miss Griffin..."_

 _"What are you doing here...?" someone whispered in an insubstantial voice. "What are you doing here... what are... doing... here?"_

 _"Meg," a static-riddled voice hissed. "You really were a mistake."_

 _Then... the world was gone._

 _Blackness. Infinite shadow stretching on endlessly._

 _Then red... all over a cracked floor._

 _Floor..._

 _Red Rivers... white pools... milk?  
_

She opened her eyes with a jolt, but the bright lights overhead once again made her cringe almost instantly. She closed them again to block the light.

 _Wait... light?_ she silently wondered, groggily trying to figure out what was going on. _Where... am I?_

In truth, her mind wasn't completely awake yet.

She could hear noises and knew she was awake, although she couldn't really feel anything... but the sounds were all wrong. The squeak of rubber on linoleum had replaced the gentle thrushing noise of the trees outside her bedroom window. The rattle of trays in a metal cart instead of her father's snoring and her mother's quiet sleep-mumbling.

Meg slowly tried to roll over, but for some reason, her body wouldn't budge.

For a long moment, she felt disoriented... her body felt strangely shaky, and there was a horrible ache in her limbs. She waited for her ears to stop ringing, then struggled to lift her head and blinked when she realized that her muscles were acting funny.

She couldn't remember how to lift her hands or move her legs... for some bizarre reason, her body didn't seem to be familiar with the memories of movement.

After a moment, she opened her mouth to call for help... but nothing came out, and her eyes widened with shock.

She tried again... but no sound escaped her lips.

Her vocal chords didn't even twitch.

A steady beeping that had been present up until this point began to fill the air.

She didn't know how to move anymore.

Struggling like a newborn infant, tears began streaming from her eyes: her arms slid across the white sheets as she struggled, still trying to scream for help, to shout for anyone nearby, but somehow, she knew deep down inside that something bad had happened to her.

It was something that went beyond getting any normal help.

Fear immediately flooded through her heart and she violently thrashed sideways, mindlessly slapping at the sheets with arms that felt like rubber. She couldn't feel anything... but a few seconds later, a shrill alarm went off, and she flailed around even more.

That's when she heard a door swing open.

"Ellen, go get the doctor right now! The patient in room three seventeen just woke up!" a female gently called; a set of hands soon grabbed her shoulders and gently set her back down. "Easy, honey, just calm down… there's no need to pull out your IV, okay? Just rest... you've been through a lot."

 _IV?_ Meg wondered hazily; her head was pounding and her body ached. _What IV...? What's going on?!_

She slowly opened her eyes, then opened her mouth and struggled to speak... but once again, only silence.

She choked, body refusing to comply with her wishes, and the woman stared at her until she got an idea.

Swallowing hard, Meg began to mouth what she wanted to say.

 _'Help me! I can't move or talk!'_

The woman blinked, then tilted her head, staring at her lips... but when Meg repeated it, she abruptly turned pale.

"That's... um, I'll go get the doctor," she stammered, backing away. "Try to stay calm until I'm back."

Meg wanted to let out a protest, but the woman was gone—leaving her alone.

She lay there, trembling in fright: feeling was slowly coming back to her body, but as it did, the ache in her limbs grew more and more intense. Her neck was in a brace, her left was wrapped up in a cast, gauze had been plastered all over her legs and right arm, and there was something wrong with her back. Before she could really start panicking, the door opened only a few moments later and someone else walked in.

"Whoa there," a strangely deep voice said. "You're bleeding... must've done a number on your arm."

Shivering, Meg slowly shifted her eyes, trying to see who was talking to her: she smelled Old Spice, the kind of aftershave that she gave her father every year for Father's day. However, this wasn't her father's voice, so who was it?

 _Who...?_ she silently wondered, still struggling to make her throat work.

"This is the first sign of life that you've shown in two whole weeks," the man sighed, gently clamping down on her wrist when she tried to move it again. "You're gonna rip your IV out if you keep flailing: you need to be careful. Now... I was told that you're having problems with your voice and motor control. Is this true?"

Meg opened her mouth, working her throat... but once again, her voice remained silent. Her tongue and the insides of her cheeks felt as though they were furry with cotton when she finally nodded.

The man's eyes darkened.

"Try to speak, to the best of your ability," the man murmured, patting her wrist. "I'm sure it feels like you've got something stuck in your throat, but please... give it your best shot."

Meg took a deep breath and willed herself to talk: she worked her throat as hard as she could, face turning bright red with the strain, but in spite of the herculean effort she put into it... not a single sound.

Her voice, like some sort of caged bird, refused to break free of her. Fear swept through her, hot and heavy, and she looked at her limbs.

Fluorescent light bulbs buzzed overhead, making the skin of her arms look almost bone white.

Through the slats of the venetian blinds on the window, she distantly made out the sight of the ocean surrounding her hometown.

Silver rails fenced her bed like a curb.

Brown hair splayed out on the pillow beneath her, she slowly turned her head and looked at the person who'd spoken with terror.

She beheld a clean-cut older man with tight blonde curls. His wire-rimmed glasses gleamed when he flashed a penlight in her eyes, but after a moment he frowned.

"Looks like most of the cobwebs are gone," he comically explained. "I'm Doctor Kesslov."

Meg stared at him with a dazed expression, then struggled to speak again with no result. Dr. Kesslov remained silent, but the worried look on his face made het extremely uneasy.

Shaking his head, the man leaned forward.

"We're going to do some tests," he noted. "I'm going to ask you to move a specific part of your body... and I want you to do as I say to the best of your abilities, all right?"

Meg hesitantly nodded, then winced at the pain in her neck.

"Move your right arm," he commanded; she struggled to do so, but he seemed satisfied when her limb twitched and slowly brushed against the sheets. "Good... now, your left arm."

She did as he asked.

"Wiggle your fingers," he instructed, watching as she fought to do so; with several twitches, her fingers finally responded, albeit much slower than she was used to. "Good. Now, move your legs."

Meg tried to do so... but like her voice, they wouldn't respond.

Hell, they didn't even twitch.

Her shoulders tensed with fright when she continued struggling, but her muscles remained immovable and she shook her head, heart speeding up again. The doctor watched her flail a little more before he lowered his eyes, closing them with a grim expression on his face.

"I thought so," Dr. Kesslov sighed, squeezing her wrist. "I'll explain everything once things have been settled, but right now, there are people who've been waiting to see you."

With that, the doctor stood up and walked over to the door before sticking his head out: she heard a murmuring of voices in the hallway, but after a few moments, the doctor pulled himself back inside before swinging the door aside with a smile.

Meg had a moment to wonder why the man was smiling at her that way, but then, her parents walked into the room with a crew of television reporters behind them.

Meg blinked in shock when her mother spread her arms wide and rushed over to the bed, throwing her arms over her and burying her face in the pillow beside her head: she could feel tears on her neck, and although she wanted to ask Lois what was wrong, she couldn't get a word in since her throat was still stuck.

Her mom pulled back and started kissing her face all over, weeping.

"Meg," she whispered, shakily lifting a hand and tearfully running it through her hair. "You're okay... you're okay!"

Meg was speechless and riveted with shock.

Her mother, not once in her whole life, had ever kissed her, let alone hugged her, or even touched her so familiarly.

 _Why?_ she fearfully wondered, shivering. _What happened to make her like this? It isn't possible!_

Then her father walked in.

He instantly folded his arms, face pulled into the same expression she'd seen on the day he'd shot her.

"She looks fine to me," he complained, making Lois jump. "What do you mean she'll need extra care?"

"Mr. Griffin," Dr. Kesslov murmured, measuring his words very carefully, "perhaps we should discuss this elsewhere."

"No, I want an answer now! Explain it right here!" Peter snapped, making Meg flinch; Lois sighed, then pulled back and looked at the people holding the camcorders. "Aside from being all beat up, what's wrong with her?!"

The doctor averted his eyes, ignoring the people who turned the cameras on him.

"Megan Griffin... your daughter," he muttered, taking a deep breath. "I'm sorry, but your daughter seems to have been paralyzed from the waist down."

Meg felt her heart drop through the floor.

Her face went slack, and her eyes widened, lips parting slightly.

Paralyzed?

 _Paralyzed_?!

The word ripped through her heart like a wildfire and sent panic shooting up her throat just as Lois straightened up in horror.

 _"P-p-Paralyzed?!"_ she choked, making everyone in the room turn to look at her. "What are you talking about? Are you saying she'll never walk again?"

"Not at all!" the doctor retorted, making her fall silent. "With the right care and proper treatment, there's a chance she could learn to walk again in rehabilitation... but the biggest problem is that she can't seem to speak any longer. I have a feeling it's because of the damage done to her spine."

 _Paralyzed?_ Meg silently asked, vision hazing over. _No... this isn't happening... I was so close to getting out of here..._

She felt like she was freezing from the inside out.

"Impossible," Peter growled, slowly shaking his head. "Impossible! It's not true!"

"Rehabilitation?!" Lois whispered. "Exactly... how much is that going to cost?!"

Dr. Kesslov looked at her.

"Quite a bit," he explained. "It isn't covered by your insurance."

When her parents shared a grim look, Meg swallowed hard. After the bomb had been dropped, her parents left to converse with the doctor more, and the people holding the cameras went with them.

Why they'd even been there, she didn't know... nor did she care. Meg was too busy mourning her future to worry about things like that: she lay staring at the ceiling, brown hair splayed out around her head with tears streaming down her cheeks.

Paralyzed.

She had been paralyzed.

She didn't really remember how, just vague snippets of Stewie and something red... but her future... her future at getting away from everything... it was gone.

When it her, Meg broke down and cried her eyes out, shuddering with the force of her anguish, but not a single sob escaped her lips... only soft exhales of breath. Quiet whispers, a mere ghost in comparison to her raging emotions.

Eventually, she had no more tears left to shed.

When the doctor finally came back, her parents weren't with him, but she'd expected as much. They'd probably decided to leave so they could plan what to do about her. However, after being wheeled out of the room and down the hall by the doctor, she found herself in a strange room.

She was lifted by two people onto a strange mat and sent into a bizarre machine that rotated above her.

After going through several more tests to figure out the dilemma she was experiencing, she was put back on the mattress and wheeled back down the hall. Her gaze fell upon the window as she was wheeled back inside the hospital room. Sunset... everything had been bathed in an orange glow.

The doctor left her not long after.

All alone.

The position she'd been in her whole life.

Her heart throbbed with agony as she lay there.

She didn't know what her new future would hold... but whatever it was, it most definitely wouldn't be pleasant.


	8. Chapter 7: Regret

**Chapter Seven: Regret**

The office was dark.

The fluorescent overhead lights were off, and the blinds over the windows were tightly closed, refusing to let the glorious sunshine outside bleed in. The telephone on the desk had been taken off of the hook... the framed pictures and degrees which adorned the walls were shrouded in darkness. A few plants also decorated the room, casting long silhouettes on the walls and floor. Principle Sheppard was sitting wearily at his desk, weathered and high-strung.

In his hand was a small leather-bound diary and across the room, his television screen was blaring the channel five news.

Joyce Kinney and Tom Tucker were both live on the air, as they always were each morning... but today, he was sitting frozen in shock since a familiar face was plastered on the top right corner of the screen, a school photo of a gentle-eyed girl with soft brown hair and a pink beanie... a girl with high cheekbones, a heart-shaped face, full lips, and an awkward smile.

"— _nd according to witnesses, the accident happened on Spooner street, right in front of the victim's home,_ " Tom was in the middle of saying. "According to reports she was in critical condition and was taken to Quahog Hospital, where she was wheeled off to urgent care."

 _"What exactly caused the accident, Tom?"_ the blonde woman sitting in the news studio asked, staring at the screen. " _Is there any news on the victim's condition?_ "

" _Yes, Joyce,"_ Tom said, then looked at the camera and said, "w _e now go live to Asian reporter Trisha Takanawa for a look at how the family and locals are handling this grave situation_. _Trisha._ "

Sheppard leaned forward and covered his mouth, tensing as the screen swapped to a familiar Chinese woman with a microphone held at the ready.

His stomach dropped through the floor when he saw the family standing behind her: a familiar overweight man in a white shirt and green slacks was giving a stupid-looking childish wave at the camera while the redhead beside him visibly fumed and tried her hardest to make him stop without making a scene. In her arms was a rather dazed looking little boy in red overalls, and behind both of them was a crying blonde boy in a blue shirt, wearing a baseball cap.

"No..." Sheppard whispered, squeezing his own mouth in horror. "Please don't tell me..."

" _Tom, I'm_ _standing here in front of Quahog's Emergency room with the family of the victim of the terrible car accident,"_ Trisha said in her usual nasal drone, then turned and walked over to Peter Griffin and held the microphone out. " _Peter Griffin, is it true that your daughter was struck by the car while attempting to save her four-year-old little brother, who was playing in the road?_ "

" _Nah, it wasn't really Stewie,"_ Peter flippantly said, then grinned widely, " _it was just a prank doll I used to pull a trick on her."_

 _"So your daughter was a victim of a prank gone wrong?"_ Trisha asked, holding the microphone out; Lois glowered, mouth tight, but Peter merely nodded with a huge smirk on his face. Sheppard felt his insides boil, wondering how this man could smile when his daughter had been crushed by a speeding vehicle thanks to something he'd stupidly, _foolishly_ done.

" _Yeah, and I caught the whole thing on camera, too!_ " he boasted, then deflated a little. " _One of them reporters who showed up earlier asked for the video, so I can't show it to ya right now, but I did. Too bad she got hit. It would have been funny as-_ "

" _It was a stupid decision,_ " Lois interrupted, stepping forward with a torn expression on her face. " _I tried to convince him not to go through with it._ "

 _"Oh, come on, Lois, you were the one who told me I could prank her!"_

 _"Peter, you insufferable... shut up!"_

 _"It seems that tensions are on a high right now, Tom,"_ Trisha said, looking at the screen. _"Back to you."_

The screen changed, revealing a set of shocked faces.

 _"Thank you, Trisha,"_ Tom said, blinking once. _"So the accident was actually caused because of a prank gone wrong... by the victim's own father, to boot!_ "

 _"It's so unfortunate,"_ Joyce said softly. _"The Griffins are very well known in Quahog, so for such a thing to happen to their daughter... such a shame._ _Do we have any information on the footage from the video?_ "

" _We have more than information, Joyce... we have video itself,_ " Tom replied, then looked at the screen. "W _e've been told that the footage you're about to see is not appropriate for children. Be warned: what you're about to watch may shock and disturb you._ "

When the news studio cut out and a video began to play, Sheppard watched with furrowed brows.

It was a video taken from a home camcorder.

 _"Nyahahaha... I can't wait,"_ Peter's familiar voice whispered, accented by his obnoxious laugh. " _Maybe Meg will even wet herself! That'd be perfect!_ "

On screen, the camera showed two hands ushering Stewie into the road, and Meg... sitting on her front porch, looking tired and exhausted. Arms around her knees and chin planted on them, she sat with her shoulder-length hair drifting off to one side, obscuring her face and glasses. The camera shifted when she abruptly stood up and ran over to her little brother, following her every movement when she pulled him out of the way.

Peter snickered when she set him down and waggled a finger.

" _Stewie, listen... playing in the middle of the road is very, very dangerous. There are cars going past that could hurt you. It's not safe, so don't do it, okay?_ "

The little boy glared, then kicked her in the shin and walked away, and Peter snickered again when Meg's eyes lowered to the ground.

" _Please just stay out of the road,_ " Meg murmured, dusting her jeans off before walking away. " _It's dangerous._ "

After she returned to the porch, then came the prank... putting the doll in place, followed by the sound of screeching tires.

"They'd better go fast enough to make it look real..." Peter grumbled, shuffling a bit. "That money came out of Meg's dowry, after all."

Sheppard's stomach clenched when he saw the girl's discomfort and uneasiness.

 _"Hey, Stewie? Um... please get off the street. It sounds like there's a car coming._ "

Her face flashing to the doll, hazel eyes worried, the sound of the car growing louder.

" _Stewie! Stewie, get out of the road!_ "

" _Nyahhahahahahaha_ ," Peter chuckled, making the camera quiver. " _This is gonna be good!_ "

But then something happened... something that made Peter stiffen and stand up, pointing the camera at her.

Sheppard saw the terror on Meg's face, saw those hazel eyes grow wide behind those dented glasses, the way her hair fanned out as she whipped her head towards the speeding sports car doing fifty down the small suburban street. Her head flew back around and a variety of emotion flashed across her face, fear, anguish, anger, and her eyes shone... then those emotions clicked and her face locked into a contorted mask of desperation.

She lunged off the porch and ran across the grass, thin arms pumping, hair flying back, sneakers slamming against the sidewalk.

" _STEWIE!_ " she screeched, sprinting towards the doll and flailing her arms with a terrified expression; when the sound of screeching tires split the air, Peter gasped and turned the camera, focusing on it as the driver stomped on the breaks. The footage jumped at the sound of a car horn. " _STEWIE, MOVE! PLEASE!"_

Sheppard slapped his other hand against his mouth and leaned back when she dove... throwing herself headlong into danger.

And the car hit her.

It hit her going fifty or sixty miles an hour.

Her ear-splitting screech filled the camera audio and the principle could only watch, eyes bugging out of his skull as the camera jumped again: the footage shook violently, but the principle could still see her flipping over the car, could see the way she landed on her neck and went rolling across the pavement. The sound of shattering safety glass and screeching tires went on forever, but then, there was stillness.

The camera suddenly fell and hit the ground, revealing that it had been stained with a long streak of blood.

" _Oh, my God..._ " Peter whispered, sounding stunned. " _I dropped the camera! Lois is gonna kill me! Please don't be broken, please don't be broken, please don't be -_ "

The video suddenly went black and without warning, Tom Tucker was back on screen.

"That is where the footage ends" he stated quietly, flipping through his papers. "Although Meg Griffin survived the accident, she is as of yet in critical condition. We hope to hear more on that later. In other news, there's a-"

Principle Sheppard snatched the remote, frantically jabbing at the power button until the screen went dark.

Eyes shadowed with fury, he contemplated what he'd just seen and heard.

Gooseflesh rose up his spine, fury and anguish burned through his veins like poison.

"He dropped the _camera_?" he hissed, hands shaking with wrath. "His daughter was hit by a car in front of him, and he was worried about the _camera_?"

He heaved a great sigh and rubbed his eyes roughly with his fingers.

He felt sick.

Sick in his heart, soul, and mind: he felt as though there was more he should have been able to do. He thought of all he had done to help Meg and knew that it was now out of his hands, but still, he cursed himself and continued wishing that there was something more he could have done.

Anything that would have helped to swing the odds in her favor.

He had been a teacher and the school principle for many years now—nineteen to be exact—and during that time had experienced many troublemakers as well as many troubled teens. As the school administrator, the only way he could hold his head high was to know unequivocally that he had everything he could to help his students be the best they could be. However, after coming into contact with Meg... he'd had a whole new definition for the word ' _troubled_ ' up his sleeve.

Ever since the incident concerning Michael Pulaski, he'd kept a close eye on her and little by little, he'd started noticing some very worrisome signs.

The same clothes... the same hat... the same tattered jeans... dented glasses... and a very quiet, somewhat antisocial disposition. Meg, at her highest pinnacle of being social, had only managed to befriend three other misfit girls... and even then, they'd only been friends in name. She no longer spoke with them, as they'd had a falling out near the end of the previous year, over something he didn't really know much about but had heard mutterings of here and there.

He'd also noticed the odd attitudes of the people around her, and in the end, he'd started going over old copies of the school's security surveillance recordings.

The first time he'd seen the extent of what had been going on with her behind closed doors, his heart had nearly failed him.

The first incident had been during her freshman year, only a week after she'd enrolled as a high school student.

Meg Griffin had been cowering in the center of a dark classroom with a ring of students all around her... students who had thrown textbooks at her, students who had laughed and spit on her... who had even gone as far as hitting her with _desk chairs_ and _baseball bats_. Then, being left alone, shivering all by herself... bruised and nearly broken, but more than anything else, her face on that first had been what bothered him.

More than the vicious bullying, more than the violence, more than the spitting, the name calling, the laughter.

The whole time, despite her posture as she'd lain cowering on the floor, her face had been completely resigned.

As if she'd accepted what they were doing to her... or was already used to such treatment.

After catching a glimpse of just how horrific her situation at school really was, whenever he'd looked at her, he hadn't been able to fathom what was going through her head. She hid it all so well that it had been impossible for him to guess that she'd been suffering such a huge scale of bullying.

"She can't ever catch a break," he muttered, leaning back with a sigh. "I hope Meg is all right.


	9. Chapter 8: Two Unexpected Visitors

**Chapter Eight: Two Unexpected Visitors**

Meg was depressed.

For the last two weeks, her mind had been in a fog since she'd been drugged up on pain medication and antibiotics. During the hours she was actually conscious, the girl was sluggish and irritable since she couldn't process anything like an intelligent human being. She'd received a few visits from unfamiliar people at varying times, but nobody she really knew had come to visit her, so she'd simply ignored everyone for the most part.

After all, her voice still wouldn't work and she still couldn't move her legs.

Her back, for the most part, was on its way to recovery... but she already knew deep down that she would never walk again since her parents didn't love her enough to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on rehabilitation.

They hadn't stopped by to see her once since the bomb had been dropped, but she'd been so drugged up that she hadn't even realized it until that very morning. She'd actually woken up feeling completely lucid for the first time in a while, and was mulling over everything that had happened. She turned her head and looked at the open hospital room window, staring at the clouds, wishing she could just fly away and disappear forever.

Lifting her arms, she gripped the edges of the bed and struggled, attempting to push herself into an upright sitting position. Her back screamed for a few moments, but she didn't care: she tugged until she was fully upright, then gently set her hands in her lap and looked out the window. It was early morning... and the breeze felt good, but reality was bleak. Even though the sun was shining, her world had turned grey, and she knew deep down inside that nothing would ever be right.

Her hair drifted around her cheeks in the gentle wind, and she closed her eyes, basking in the sensation.

She could almost imagine she wasn't in the hospital, paralyzed... but...

No, she couldn't.

That was a lie.

She could already feel her eyes watering.

Meg had definitely felt sorry for herself a few times over the years, but at this moment—all alone and surrounded by nothing but stale air and machinery—she couldn't help herself. Her small hands shook uncontrollably, so she dug her fingernails into her palms, attempting to abate her sorrow with pain. She looked around at the small, sterile white room, which grew smaller and blander with each passing moment.

The incessant bleating of the electrocardiograph machine pierced through the stark atmosphere of the room and reverberated sharply and hollowly.

Her chance at escaping was over.

Her ability to speak and walk were both gone forever, with no way of ever getting them back.

Every time that wave of reality smashed into her and brought with it the awful sense of clarity she got while thinking about her life, her heart burned with agony. It was an ache so deep and terrible that no amount of tears could ever express it. Her parents had destroyed her. From the moment she'd been born, through all the years she'd lived with them, they'd destroyed every single part of her.

First, her dreams.

Then, her heart.

Then, her mind.

Then, her future.

And now, even her ability to walk.

Nobody could tell her it would ever be okay... because it wasn't, and never would be.

Meg kept her eyes shut tight so the she wouldn't have to look at anything anymore.

She locked herself away from the pain in the hole she called a heart, separating herself from it, so she wouldn't feel anymore... but before she could completely detach herself, the door to the hospital room suddenly opened without warning and someone walked inside. Meg opened her eyes and slowly turned, dazed, to find herself staring straight at... Michael Pulaski?

She blinked, then squinted slightly, figuring she was mistaken.

She could barely see without her glasses.

"I'll be in the reception area," a feminine voice murmured from the hall. "If you need something, just let me know."

"Will do," Mike's familiar voice muttered, making her blink again. "Leave us alone, please."

"All right," the feminine voice sighed. "Enjoy your visit with your sister."

Meg did a double take when Mike Pulaski shut the door and turned to look at her... but then, for whatever reason, his face tensed and his eyes widened.

A warm breeze rustled her hair as she gazed in his direction, trying to figure out why he was here... what he wanted. She was broken now, so she figured it was probably because he wanted to gloat about how she couldn't uphold the bet.

That had to have been it.

He'd come to tell her the bet was off.

For several moments, they merely looked at each other, but then he tilted his head back with a smirk.

"So, Beanie Girl..." he muttered, folding his arms with a cocky expression. "I guess you really _won't_ be staying at school, huh?"

Yep.

Meg blinked again, then let out a soundless sigh and leaned back against the pillows, turning her head away from him. Heart stagnant, unfluttering, she gazed in the direction of the sky, feeling trapped in so many ways. Not being able to speak... to express herself... to communicate... she felt like a bird in a cage.

But the cage was her own body.

It was like being stuck in a nightmare and finding herself unable to scream or cry for help.

She heard Michael sit down, but didn't turn.

"So..." he muttered. "Is it true... that you can't talk?"

Meg turned, then, to see him staring at her with that deadpan scowl of his.

She swallowed and nodded, giving him a halfhearted smile that made his eyes darken a little. He didn't say anything for a time, just sat back and chewed on the inside of his cheek. Meg honestly didn't get why he'd come to visit her... after all, aside from the one conversation they'd had on the rooftop, they'd never been even close to friendly, and he'd already gloated about her new handicap, so it didn't make sense.

In the end, though, she gave up since she no longer had the will to care.

Nothing mattered anymore.

She was just about to close her eyes when Mike pulled a notepad out of his pocket along with a pen, then held it out to her. Confused, Meg stared at them blankly, but when he wagged them in her face impatiently, she reached out and took them, casting him a slightly perplexed and hesitant glance.

"Use those to talk," he explained, giving her a glare. "Not being able to chat would be pointless."

Meg glanced down at the pad, then flicked it open and scrawled a response.

When she held it up, he leaned forward, staring at her handwriting.

 _'Why are you here?'_

His face was an expressionless slate for a second, but then he pulled back and folded his arms.

"Several reasons," he sneered, taking on a comfortable slouch as he regarded her through those fierce amber eyes. "For one thing, you owe me a cigarette once you get out of here... and I also wanted to see if you were going to duck out on our bet."

Meg's heart deadened.

Shifting her gaze, she wrote something down with a trembling hand, then held the pad up.

 _'I'm paralyzed from the waist down, and I can't talk anymore. Even if I do graduate from high school and get away from Quahog now, I'm half broken. I barely had a shot of making it on my own even when I still had movement in my legs. Now, there's no way. There's no point. I'm trapped here.'_

Mike didn't seem fazed after reading what she'd written, but when he looked up from the pad and saw the tears that had brimmed in her eyes spilling over, his face took on a genuine look of discomfort. Meg didn't blame him, though... because even though she was crying now, she was still forcing a smile. She had to smile, because if she didn't, she would break down and cry in front of him, and that was the last thing she wanted to do.

Not in front of a bully.

Not in front of _anyone_.

"What about rehabilitation?" he demanded lowly, folding his arms. "Aren't you going to be doing that?"

She shook her head, then shakily wrote her response.

His eyes skimmed across the writing when she held the pad up.

 _'My parents won't pay for it.'_

"Are you kidding?" Mike barked, standing up with an outraged stare. "That's bogus! Why won't they?!"

Meg kept smiling, mouth quivering and tears streaming down her pale cheeks even as she lowered her head and wrote something down.

He watched as she wrote the words that had haunted her every single day of her life.

Then, she held it up with shaking hands.

 _'I was a mistake."_

He stared at the writing with a blank expression, balled hands unraveling.

"What is that even supposed mean?" Mike growled, giving her a very angry and perplexed expression. "I don't get it."

And Meg knew he never would, and never _could_ , but she held the smile and rubbed her eyes, swallowing the lump in her throat.

She didn't bother responding to his question and turned her eyes away when he slowly sat back down.

"So, do you have an idea about when you're getting out?" he asked, folding his arms again. "Any news?"

Meg blinked, then scrawled down a response.

 _'I heard the nurse say that I can leave in just a few more days, but I'm going to be in a wheelchair."_

His eyes flickered with some unknown emotion when she lowered the pad.

"Well, make sure you're in school," he growled. "You and I had a deal... if you can make it two months, I'll be your bodyguard. The bet is still on."

Meg felt a bit shocked and confused when got up and stalked over to the door, throwing it open. He was just about to walk out into the hall when suddenly, he paused, hand on the frame. His head turned to the side slightly, and his shoulders tensed, and she faintly made out the sight of his proud hooked nose.

"By the way... you have beautiful handwriting."

She jerked, staring at him in startled shock with her mouth open, but rather than say anything else he walked out.

She kept her eyes trained on his broad shoulders until the door closed and he disappeared.

Then the door shut, and she was alone again.

She wondered about his compliment on her handwriting, since it was an odd thing for anyone to really notice, but then again, this entire situation as a whole was completely out of the ordinary, so maybe she was just overthinking it. She was just about to relax again and put it out of her head when the door suddenly opened again. She nearly jumped out of her skin and turned, trying to see who it was, but the arrival hadn't made it to the door yet.

"Well, she's in here," a familiar female voice explained. "What a lucky girl, to have such caring brothers."

"I'm supposed to be in school right now, but I snuck out to see Meg. Please don't tell anyone."

Meg winced at the sound of Christopher's voice and turned to face the window once again

"I understand," the woman she assumed was a nurse murmured. "It must be difficult. Just press the red buzzer if you need anything."

Meg refused to move when her real brother walked in.

She didn't want to see his platinum blonde hair, falling out from beneath his favorite baseball cap, or his blue shirt and jeans, his large frame... after all, Chris was still as hateful as ever, constantly trying to diminish her and make her fade away from their family.

She was the only one without talent.

If he saw that she'd been crying, she'd never hear the end of the teasing, since he'd tell their parents.

He hesitantly made his way over to the chair, obviously not wanting to make too much noise or startle her by accident, and in his hands was a blanket.

"Hey, M-Meg? Are… you okay…?" Chris asked, speaking so softly that his slur was barely audible; she didn't even twitch, just continued staring out the window. "M-Meg? It's okay if you don't wanna talk… you're probably tired, so I understand. I figured I would bring you some soda and a blanket, though. It's kinda cold in here…"

As if to contradict his words, the clouds outside parted and a warm breeze wafted into the room.

She wanted to keep staring at the clouds and fully ignore him, but as if a higher power were sending her some kind of message, they suddenly parted and the setting sun nearly blinded her. She winced, squinting, and then slowly turned her head with a sigh, looking at him head on with her features both aglow and cast in shadow. Her brother watched as she flipped open the pad and tiredly scrawled something across the front.

He leaned forward, squinting as she held it up.

"' _Thank you, Chris_ ,'" he read aloud, blinking rapidly. "Er, you're welcome."

When he hesitantly handed her the blanket and the large bottle of Pepsi, she couldn't help but notice the odd unhappiness in his eyes. Meg feigned a small smile, trying her best to put his mind at rest, but her sibling easily saw through the ruse and merely walked over to the side of the bed and stared down at her. A noticeable silence descended between them. Of the people in her family, Chris was the only one who'd ever truly noticed when she was in her worst moods.

Even though he teased and harassed her like their parents did, he often asked her for advice... and she, occasionally, gave it to him.

Out of all the people in her house, she was probably closer to him than anyone else since he was actually the _kindest_ out of all the hateful.

Still... being the kindest of them didn't really change the fact that he was still hateful.

That's why she had to know.

Looking down, she scrawled her question down in the pad and held it up.

 _'Why are you here?'_

"Because you're my sister," he said, looking confused. "I was scared when you got hit by the car."

She did a double take, then stared at him in disbelief before furiously scribbling down a response.

 _'Why would you be scared? You hate me just like Mom and Dad!'_

 _"_ I don't hate you!" Chris exclaimed, blinking rapidly in shock. "You're my sister!"

Meg's eyes burned and she felt her temper flash, dark and hot; clenching her jaw, she wrote down a response and held it up.

 _'I'm also a daughter, Chris. Our parents genuinely hate me, and you bully me the same way they do. Explain that."_

"But Dad said a long time ago teasing you was the best way to show you I love you!" Chris explained, looking very, _very_ confused. "When I was really little, you suddenly stopped playing with me for a long time, so I asked him and he said it would make you happy again if I teased you! And Mom said you'd be even happier if I did better than you at things. She said it was because you loved me."

Meg blinked, not wanting to believe it, but she knew from personal experience that her brother's autism made him extremely gullible. Particularly when he'd been younger... with movies, he'd thought they were real. In school, he'd eaten up every single word his friends had told him, and as a result, had believed in a lot of things that weren't even real. Many would have called him slow... and in a way, he was: interacting with other people wasn't his strong point.

He was simple-minded.

Meg slowly scribbled a response and held it up, giving him a hard look.

 _'Do you remember what your very first words were?'_

He looked confused.

"No, why would I?" he asked, shrugging. "I was a baby... I can barely remember what I ate for breakfast. I only remember that because we still tease you to this day and mom keeps hounding me to do better. That's why."

Meg nodded, then lowered her eyes before writing down a lengthy reply.

 _'Everyone got what they wanted in the end. I can't talk anymore. Please just go away... you don't know anything about me, or even why our parents act the way they do, and yet instead of asking me, personally, how to make me happy... you based all of your actions towards me on what our idiot father said to you all those years ago.'_

He read the reply, but then his face screwed up.

"Fine!" he shouted, clenching his fists. "See if I care!"

Without another word, he burst into tears and ran out of the room... but even though Meg felt a twinge of guilt, she didn't have much room in her heart to care about anything anymore. All she wanted to do was go to sleep and never wake up again.


	10. Chapter 9: The Chair

**Chapter Nine: The Chair**

It was funny, how things worked in life... it was all a tumble of 'if's' and 'buts'

If Peter hadn't pranked her, Meg would have had the use of her legs.

If she hadn't fallen for his trick, she would still be able to walk.

If her parents loved her, she wouldn't be here.

But she was here.

Alone.

Still.

Even on the last day in the hospital.

She had been stuck in the hospital for another week, undergoing more tests... and after one of the last X-rays, the doctor had ordered for the neck brace to be replaced with bandages. All in all, she had been healing up so nicely that she was supposedly going to be leaving the hospital and returning home that day.

Her parents hadn't visited her once while she'd been bedridden. Not that she'd wanted them to, of course... she wouldn't have been able to face her father's smart remarks, or the look of disgust and cold disappointment on her mother's face, as if everything bad was her fault. Every time she'd ever been sick, her dad had taken advantage of it and hurt her on purpose, so not seeing them might have been a blessing.

She still had a small scar on her jaw from when she'd gotten the mumps and he'd thrown a glass of milk at her face... as if the steaming bowl of soup he'd chucked at her right before that hadn't been _enough_ of a way to say ' _I hate you'_. She sat silently in the sterile bed, waiting for the nurse to bring her new wheelchair with her eyes on the clouds outside the window, but when the door finally opened, she glanced up...

And was instantly horrified.

Eyes large behind her glasses, she stared at the smiling nurse, who had her hands on her new wheelchair.

Although, 'new' was kind of a lie.

Blinking rapidly behind her glasses, Meg stared at the wheelchair in disbelief, not wanting to think this was real... that it was really happening.

But it was.

The dented, rusted, ratty wheelchair in front of her would be her new legs.

It was too much to bear.

Her eyes watered for a moment, but she choked back the tears when the nurse wheeled it over.

"All right, Megan," the woman sweetly told her, voice dripping with sugary syrup as she lowered the bars of the hospital bed. "Let's go! It's time to go home!"

Meg looked at her deadened legs and weakly attempted to drag them out from under the covers using her hands.

The nurse stood there, watching passively, as she finally managed to manually pull her useless limbs out and drape them in an upright position. Her back and her neck smarted for a moment, but she eventually managed to slide herself onto the hospital floor, where she dragged herself along the tiles using her arms. Taking a deep breath, she gripped the bars of the wheelchair and struggled to pull herself up.

The nurse merely smiled, eyes full of forced cheer, but made no move to help.

Meg wasn't upset though: she was determined not to have any help, regardless. If she was ever going to survive, she needed to do things herself, because nobody would help her once she was home. Limbs shaking, she finally managed to sit down on the wheelchair, then dragged her legs into place, panting heavily. She wiped her brow, feeling sweaty and gross and a little nauseous since the movements had hurt her back a little bit.

"Let's go," the woman sweetly urged, opening the door and motioning for her to start rolling. "Come on, Megan."

The nurse's tone and obvious attitude problem irritated her, but she jerkily did as she was told and somehow managed to turn the rusted wheelchair around. Rolling herself out the door turned out to be a difficult process because of how rusted the wheels on the chair were, though.

 _Figures that my parents would get me the cheapest thing possible,_ she silently muttered. _No surprise there._

The halls slowly moved past as she worked her arms, shoulders screaming in agony, panting heavily.

When her muscles began to throb, she fully realized that it was far harder than it looked and she abruptly realized why her neighbor, Joe Swanson, had such huge arm muscles: the effort it took to roll herself to the elevator had taken an hour's worth of energy. She was grateful when she was able to rest her arms, but that brief respite only made her muscles scream even more once she started again.

It took fifteen minutes just for her to reach the lobby.

Her reward for the struggle was to see Jerome waiting for her instead of her family.

Meg's heart instantly squeezed and she momentarily looked away from him, assaulted by a wash of unpleasant memories, but she eventually gathered her strength and made her way forward. The black man turned when she rolled up, but his stoic expression cracked and he could only watch with a tight face as she approached, breathing heavily. His face quivered for a moment, as if he were fighting back a torrent of emotions, but then he let out a sigh.

"Hey, Meg," he drawled in that familiar baritone. "It's been a long while.'

She stared at him sullenly and scribbled a disheartened response, holding it up in front of her nose.

 _'What are you doing here?'_

"Your old man got drunk at The Clam, so Joe Swanson asked me to snag you," Jerome grunted. "You've already been checked out, so let's just get you home."

Walking behind the chair and putting his arms on the handles, he tried to push her towards the front doors, but... he couldn't do it.

His eyes hardened when he tried again, and with a squeal from the rusted wheels, she was off. Meg set her arms in her lap and lowered her head when he pushed her outside, because from here onward, her life would be returning to the way it had been before... only now, she was crippled.

There would be no special help.

There would be no care.

There would be no _respite_.

Living hell awaited her.

She took a deep breath, but then the wheelchair snagged on something and she was tossed forward. Jerome struggled to move it again, but when he failed, he unexpectedly cursed and knelt down, picking up the entire thing. Meg's heart lurched and she snatched the armrests as he carried her the rest of the way, grunting and straining before he gently shoved her into the back of his minivan.

It didn't take him long to get into the driver's seat and key the ignition.

The ride home was a silent one, since Meg couldn't talk and Jerome was obviously not in the mood to speak to her.

Her eyes watered as she pondered the future, but when a few tears started trickling down her cheeks, she frantically wiped them.

She wouldn't cry.

She had to be stronger than before, because she was _weaker_.

After she'd managed to fight back the tears, she closed her eyes, trying to process what was happening. Even after so many days in the hospital, it still didn't feel real, it felt more like this were a nightmare she was unable to awaken from. A few few times along the way home, she actually pinched herself in an effort to force her mind into waking up: it had always worked in the past whenever she'd had a nightmare.

"I'm so sorry, Meg."

Her face twitched since it had come out of nowhere.

She lifted her eyes and looked towards the front of the van, feeling a bit confused when she saw Jerome's chocolate brown eyes looking at her in the rear view mirror: there was a surprising amount of guilt there, and a whole lot of pity, but Meg felt nothing but a stab of anger and hurt.

Her lips tightened and she abruptly looked out the window, eyes stinging even more than before.

She knew why he was apologizing, and she didn't want to accept it.

Back when his house had been undergoing fire damage repairs, he'd stayed with them for a few days before couch hopping at Glenn's. She'd been uncomfortable having a strange hulking black man sleeping one bedroom away from her own, so she hadn't shown her face much while he'd been there, and things at school had been particularly awful that week: Connie and everyone else had been cornering her alone, telling her to kill herself, writing notes that suggested she should die...

And she would have.

For once, she'd actually gathered enough courage to do it.

She would have pulled off committing suicide if Jerome hadn't walked into her room at precisely the wrong moment.

His simple curiosity about the room beyond her perpetually closed door had made him open it right as she'd been about to step off the chair and hang herself using a couple of belts. Before she could say a single word, he'd bolted forward and lunged onto the chair, ripping her carefully constructed noose _and_ the ceiling fan down with a crash. He'd roughly grabbed her arms and shoved her down onto the bed, looking more furious and frightening than anyone she'd ever met.

" _What the fuck was you thinkin'?!_ " he'd roared. " _Are you crazy?!"_

Meg had only been able to stare at him, on the verge of bursting into tears.

" _No, I'm not,_ " she'd croaked. " _I'm doing the right thing. This is what everyone wants._ "

 _"You really are crazy!"_ he'd bellowed, waving his arms. " _Your momma and daddy would be heartbroken! Did you even think of them?!_ "

But to his shock, she'd burst into tears and harsh laughter at the same time.

 _"Heartbroken?_ _They don't give a shit if I'm here or not. They'd throw a party instead of a funeral if I died."_

" _Bullshit. Lois would never do somethin' like that, and Peter wouldn't either, even if he does have a few screws loose._ "

" _And how would you know?"_ Meg had asked. " _You dated my mother twenty years ago, Jerome. She doesn't care about me. Neither does my dad."_

 _"Yes, they do."_

 _"No, they don't, and I can prove it."_

He'd raised an eyebrow and folded his arms, looking her up and down; above him, the wires sticking out of her ceiling had sparked a few times.

" _I'm listening,"_ he'd muttered. " _If you're bein' honest, prove it like you say you can."_

" _You know how my dad gets when he sees you around my mom, right?_ " she'd told him, mouth quivering in defiance. " _And you know how my Mom acts when it comes to Chris and Stewie getting hurt, right? Or doing things they shouldn't be doing?_ "

" _Yeah... so what?_ "

" _Next time you see my dad, tell him you had sex with me,_ " she'd told him, ignoring his shocked reaction. " _Then you'll know._ "

" _I can't do that,_ " he'd muttered. " _I have a daughter around your age, and you're a minor, too! I can't say somethin' like that!_ "

" _If you want proof, that's how you'll get it,"_ she'd sniffed, rolling over and sadly facing her bedroom wall. " _Do the same thing with my mom. Next time you see her, tell her I fell down the stairs and you think I broke my ankle or my leg or something."_

He'd stared at her for the longest time, eyes wide and a very uncomfortable expression on his face, but then he'd run a hand through his wild black hair and had walked out of her room without saying another word, closing the door.

That same night, he'd done what she'd asked him to do before leaving.

Right after he and Peter had resolved the situation between him and Lois not sleeping around, he'd actually told Peter that he'd slept with Meg instead, and her father's reaction had been instantaneous.

" _I don't care about that._ "

From that point on, whenever he'd seen her, Jerome had looked at her with eyes that plainly said he knew the truth.

He knew that her family didn't give a shit.

She didn't trust him, though, because the one time he could have gotten her out of the Griffin household, he'd taken her father's side and defended him. When Peter had shot her, he'd told the courts that she'd tried to commit suicide by shooting herself, and the fucked up part was that everyone had believed him. A few months after she'd fully recovered, however, Jerome's daughter, Pam, had unexpectedly come to her locker at school and had given her a very tight hug from behind.

 _"My dad said to remind you that we're always here if you need to talk,"_ she'd whispered. _"Just tell us and we'll be there, 'kay?"_

And for the first, and last time, in her life... she'd genuinely reached out to someone for help.

After school that same day, she'd gone to Jerome's house and had told him everything they'd done, with the truth about her dad shooting her.

He hadn't believed her.

He'd told her she was over-exaggerating things, that her story was too unrealistic, that it didn't make since.

He'd called her a liar.

Since then, she hadn't spoken a single word to him, because he was just like everyone else.

He didn't listen. Didn't see. Didn't care.

Meg was alone.

She shivered when she realized he was pulling up in front of a familiar yellow house with a red roof.

"We're here," Jerome muttered, getting out of the car and opening the rear door; with steady hands, he pulled her out and gently set the chair on the concrete road. Meg's eyes were drawn to a long black streak that had stained the white pavement, but she looked away since she knew what it was.

The remains of her blood.

Jerome pushed her all the way up to the front door, then rang the doorbell.

"Coming!" Lois's voice happily trilled; footsteps followed, but when the door opened, the redhead halted. "Hello, Jerome. Thanks for bringing her home!"

Those hazel eyes narrowed when she saw Meg, still heavily bandaged up, sitting in the rusty old wheelchair.

Meg didn't even return that cold, judgmental gaze.

"She hasn't said a word," Jerome noted, stepping back and giving them both a look. "I've never seen Meg so quiet."

"Well, that's good, I guess," Lois exclaimed, forcing a laugh before she roughly dragged the wheelchair into the house. "I'll take it from here. Say hi to Pam for me!"

And without another word, she slammed the door in his face.

Meg watched as her mother stomped back over to the couch and sat down before she wheeled herself over to the stairs, wanting nothing more than to go upstairs to her room... but she halted, looking up at them in confusion. She glanced back at Lois to see if she had any answers, but the television was on and her mom wasn't even looking at her anymore. Meg swallowed, then slowly leaned forward, letting herself fall out of the chair and onto the first step.

She hadn't even been able to put her clothes on... she was still wearing a hospital gown.

Hands shaking, she began to crawl up the steps, shifting her weight and pulling herself up them one at a time.

As she was doing this, however, Stewie came into view.

He stopped, looking down at her... then he tilted his head and mumbled something. He sat down at the top of the stairs and watched her struggle with husky blue eyes that looked far colder and much more calculating than any normal four-year-old's should have. When she made it to the top step and stopped to take a breather, setting her head on the stairs, he smirked in a very adult-like manner.

" _Well_ ," he drawled, making Meg freeze; she slowly lifted her eyes and blinked at him, then looked around to see if someone had broken into their house. "It seems you've made it home, Meg."

She turned and looked at her baby brother, heart seizing and mouth dropping open.

 _Is Stewie... talking?_ she wondered, eyes growing huge behind her glasses. _What...?_

"Hmmm... I guess I underestimated you," he said airily, speaking in a highly inflected tone; lifting his little hand, he gripped her chin and turned her face this way and that, peering at her in a calculating manner. "At the very least, it would seem you might actually be useful to me, especially since you can't talk now. Yes, very useful indeed... I must discuss this with Brian at once!"

 _What the fu-doodle cakes?_ Meg silently whispered, blinking rapidly. _I've lost my mind... I've gone insane from the shock. There's no way!_

"Sorry to miss your welcome back party," Stewie sighed, smiling at her in a very adult fashion, "but I have to go take care of some business. Have fun crawling. It does get easier after a time, you know, but... oh, well, it would see you'll have to get better at it than walking. Tah-tah!"

Then, with a bizarrely maniacal laugh, he got to his feet and wandered off, leaving Meg staring after him with her jaw on the floor.

She opened her mouth to call his name, but like before, no sound came out of her mouth, only a dry whisper of air.

She huffed, then decided to take what she'd just seen as a hallucination and continued crawling towards her bedroom. She was sure that the pain medication they'd put into her IV was responsible, there was no fucking way her little brother could have just been talking. She was either nuts or still drugged up.

It was still only ten in the morning, so her father was at work and Chris was probably at school, but she was already exhausted and wanted to go to sleep. Luckily, her bed wasn't too far away... if only she could make it there. Struggling madly, with sweat running down her cheeks, she fought to drag herself to her bedroom... and once she was there, she flailed for the doorknob and managed to snatch it on the third try.

She jerked it around and wriggled it until the door opened and she saw her bed.

Relief swamped her and she struggled to drag herself over to the mattress, aching all over.

She managed to grab the edge , but pulling herself onto the bed itself was difficult, and she ended up pulling her comforter and all of her sheets clean off in her attempt to get a good hold on it. That didn't stop her, though: with a final great heave, she managed to slide onto her familiar, soft bed and let her face flop on her pillow, closing her eyes with a sigh and carefully twisting her upper torso.

She was beyond exhausted.

 _Is every day going to be this hard?_ she silently wondered, opening her eyes and peering at the mattress through her lashes. _What am I gonna do?_

She didn't know, but there were several things she was sure of.

One, she would still be attending school.

Two, moving around was going to be a pain in the ass.

Three, putting on pants was going to be impossible for her unless she wanted extra effort and exhaustion.

Four, she was as helpless as an infant.

And five... her future was gone.

She had no voice. She couldn't walk. And nobody cared.

Meg forced herself to roll onto her back, the process taking extra effort since she needed to manually move her legs, and stared at the ceiling.

Thinking.

She was returning to school tomorrow, and that in itself would be a new hell to overcome since she was pretty sure everyone had seen the accident and its repercussions thanks to the news. She had been mortified to discover that the people she'd seen coming and going while she'd been out of it had actually been news reporters, and upon remembering the video she'd seen earlier that morning, she cringed involuntarily.

The slow motion replay of her getting hit by the car, then the neck-break landing... it had been painful to watch.

It was a wonder her neck actually hadn't broken.

Somehow, she'd gotten off without even a fracture in that part of her body, but her spine _had_ been messed up... was _still_ messed up.

The doctor had warned her not to put too much strain on herself just yesterday, but such a thing was impossible with her situation since she had absolutely no help.

Closing her eyes, Meg let out a huff of air and decided to go back to sleep.

That's all she really wanted to do.

Sleep.

And so, she did... she slept the whole day away.

* * *

Later that evening, when Peter got home from work, Lois stood up and looked him dead in the eyes.

"Peter, we need to talk," she said firmly, folding her arms. "It's serious."

"Not now, Lois," the glasses-wearing man said, holding up a hand. "I'm in the process of imagining the concept of Buddhism making Jesus Christ a sandwich."

She tapped her foot and watched as he stared off into space for nearly two minutes... but then, he let out a low snicker and she rolled her eyes.

"Peter, listen to me!" Lois snapped. "It's about Meg!"

"What about her?" Peter scoffed, setting his stuff down and flopping on the couch.

"She's home," Lois retorted, gesturing at the ratty wheelchair her daughter had arrived in. "What are we gonna do about the money situation? Everyone knows what happened to her is our fault! Our reputation will be destroyed if we don't let her do rehab, but we can't even _hope_ to afford it! Rehabilitation can take _years_!"

Peter simply looked at her, not seeming all that worried.

"So?" he asked, making her gawk. "Meg's eighteen. She should be grateful just to be livin' here."

"Peter, this is a serious issue!" Lois snapped, moving in front of the television in fury. "Eighteen or not, we have to _do_ something!"

"Lois, calm down," Peter drawled, rolling his eyes. "You're more worked up than that time that Giraffe had a baby on our front lawn."

"PETER!" she angrily barked, clenching her fists. "Listen to me! We NEED to DO something! Meg could have you thrown in JAIL for this! You paid the driver of that car a hundred bucks to speed on a suburban street, and he hit her! She could genuinely put you away for _good_ if she really wanted to!"

That caught his attention, and he looked shocked, but then he narrowed his eyes.

"Oh, so that's how she wants to play this, eh?" he asked, getting to his feet and rolling up his sleeves. "We'll see about that!"

When he made as if to stomp over to the stairs, Lois grabbed his arm.

"Don't even think about it!" she snapped, then glanced at the window with a harsh frown; as she'd thought, Joe Swanson was watching them from his window using a pair of binoculars, the same way he'd done ever since the accident. "Joe's still watching the house."

"Joe?" Peter snorted, turning and looking at her. "I haven't seen Joe at the bar in a while. The guys say he hasn't been feeling up for drinking lately."

"Peter, we really have to do something," Lois muttered, clutching his arm with a worried expression. "We can't just sit back and not fix this! The whole _state_ saw the accident on television! Maybe even other states, too! The way you handled yourself during that interview painted us in a very, _very_ bad light!"

The man sighed, then pulled her into a hug.

"All right, Lois," he conceded. "We'll think of something. Maybe some sort of fundraiser."

He instantly imagined standing with the guys and holding a huge banner depicting a disgusting, photo shopped image of Meg with the words " _Donate to Help my Ugly Daughter Walk again. And have plastic surgery"_ beneath it.

The image popped like a soap bubble when Lois pulled away and smiled.

"All I'm asking as that we try," she murmured, glancing at the window out of the corner of her eye. "Who knows? Maybe if we call Daddy, he'll help Meg walk again!"

Peter instantly looked uncomfortable.

"I dunno, Lois," he drawled, narrowing his eyes. "Your father isn't too keen on helping us these days."

"Well, I'll still give him a call and test the waters, then," Lois sighed. "As long as we do _something_."

Right around that moment, the front door opened and Chris walked into the house; Lois instantly turned around and smiled warmly.

"Welcome home, Chris!" she exclaimed, troubles vanishing from her expression. "How was your day?"

The blonde boy merely looked at her.

"It was good... I talked to some of my friends about Meg today," he explained, then lowered his eyes. "Mom? Dad? Can I ask you about something?"

"Sure, Chris, go ahead," Peter drawled, picking his nose and flicking the contents he pulled out of it away from him.

"Well, do you remember when I was little?" he asked, making Lois blink. "The day I asked you guys how to make Meg happy?"

Peter stared off into space, narrowing his eyes. Then he gasped.

"Oh, yeah, I remember that!" he exclaimed, then let out a laugh. "Lois, remember? Chris came up to us asking how to make Meg happy, so we told him what _not_ to do!"

The woman blinked, then her eyes flashed and she covered her mouth to hide a snicker.

"I do remember that," she chuckled, laughing throatily. "The look on her face! Like she'd swallowed a lemon, every time! It was so funny!"

"Why do you ask, Chris?"

However, when they turned to look at him, he looked stunned and horrified.

"You... you guys lied to me?" he asked, obviously not believing his ears. "But... but you said Meg _liked_ being teased! And that me being more successful than her would make her happy! You even said she liked it when Dad yelled at her, because it means he cared!"

"Eh, that was all a lie," Peter callously drawled, flopping down on the couch. "We told ya that for shits and giggles, Chris."

The blonde boy's face turned red and he clenched his fists.

"You mean that Meg really doesn't like it?!" he shouted. "We've... been making her mad and upset all those times for real?!"

"Yeah," Peter said, eyes glued to the television screen. "Oh, shhh! My favorite game show is on!"

On the screen was a cockeyed woman in a shark tank eating dollar bills like a goldfish.

Chris, bright red with shock, outrage, and horror, lost his temper.

The rage surged into his throat.

Stomping forward towards the television his father's eyes were glued to, he let out a scream and kicked the flat screen with all of his strength. Both of his parents jumped when it fell over, but Chris didn't stop: still screaming at the top of his lungs in utter fury, he stomped on the television until it was totally busted. Then, he turned and looked at his parents, face even redder and breathing hard.

"CHRIS!" Lois squeaked. "What on earth has gotten into you?! What are you—"

"Shut up!" the blonde boy shouted, making his parents twitch. "Just shut up! Don't say another word!"

"Chris, what's wrong?" Lois whispered, staring at him with round eyes. "Why are you so angry?"

"SHUT UP!" Christopher angrily bellowed, stomping his foot yet again; the woman instantly flinched back with an expression of startled hurt on her face. "YOU LIED TO ME! BECAUSE OF YOU, MEG HATES ME!"

Both of them stared at him, but his eyes filled with tears when he noticed that they didn't look concerned.

Just mildly confused.

"What's your point?" Peter demanded, angrily getting to his feet making his son turn almost purple with fury. "Why do you care?"

Without a second thought, Christopher threw his school bag at his father with all of his strength. Peter let out a terrified shout and cowered with his hands over his head, then backed away towards his wife with quivering eyes. Both of his parents looked afraid of this outburst.

"Chris!" the woman cried. "Don't throw things! That's a very bad thing to do!"

"I don't believe you!" Chris hollered, clenching his fists. "You told me teasing Meg was a _good_ thing, and look at _her_! She got hit by a _car_! LIARS!"

"You're going too far," Peter warned, narrowing his dark brown eyes. "If you don't stop with this shenanigan, I'll have to discipline you."

 _"Excuse_ me?! This is _my_ way of disciplining _you!"_ Chris instantly roared, making his father cower once again. "Parents can make mistakes! I know that because you make them all the time! But you two messed up EVERYTHING this time! YOUR LIES MADE ME HURT MY OWN SISTER FOR YEARS AND YEARS!"

"Young man, d-don't you take that tone with us," Peter stammered, nervously waggling his finger. "D-do you understand?"

"SHUT UP!" Chris screamed, face turning dark crimson. "MEG WAS RIGHT! YOU'RE THE WORST PARENTS EVER!"

"Stop fighting!" Lois cried. "Chris, please, just tell us how to fix this!"

"Meg is in a wheelchair like Mr. Swanson because of you! HOW _CAN_ YOU FIX THIS?!"

"It was only a little prank," Peter whimpered. "I didn't mean to!"

"If you really feel that way, apologize!" Christopher spat, turning his eyes away from his parents with a trembling mouth. "I want you to apologize for everything! I love Meg! She's my big sister! But because of you, she hates me! It's _all_ because of you! I always wondered why she never smiled at me, why we always laughed when we teased her, why we _did_ tease her, and why nobody ever listened. You said she was dramatic, that it was fine, and I _thought_ it was okay because of _YOU_!"

"You're grounded!" Peter finally snapped, pointing at the ground. "You broke the television, so go to your room! After everything we've done for you... ungrateful."

"Peter," Lois whispered, resting a hand on his arm, "don't be so harsh on him. He's our son."

"Meg needs more sympathy than I do, Mom," Chris said coldly. "After all, she's mentally unstable because of _you_ guys. Go take a good look in the mirror and see who REALLY needs to be grounded. I may be slow, and dumb, but I'm still smart enough to know what's right and wrong. And this is ALL WRONG!"

After kicking the television one last time, he grabbed his bag and stomped towards the stairs, but when he saw the dented and pitiful wheelchair resting in front of them he froze. Eyes flashing up towards the top of the staircase, he tore past Lois and bolted up them two at a time.

To his shock and delight, the door at the end of the hall was open.

Tearing over to Meg's room, he stumbled inside, but his face fell when he saw her lying fast asleep.

Still, she was home... she was really home.

He wanted to talk to her, to say that he was sorry... that he hadn't meant to tease her and hurt her feelings... but she looked exhausted, so he reluctantly walked out of the room and closed the door behind him before heading into his own bedroom. He leaned against the door, promising himself that he would be a better brother from now on. He wouldn't listen to his parents anymore. They'd lied to his face about something that had actually really mattered to him for years on end.

Everything he'd done had been based off of an actual lie.

"I'll be a good brother," he mumbled, clenching his fist before straightening his cap. "I'll make sure nobody bullies Meg, ever again!"

Sadly, that would be much easier said than done, considering he was kind of a wuss, but he would try.

He would try.


	11. Chapter 10: The Struggle Begins

**Author's Note:** _Sorry about the extreme delay with my writing. I have some serious projects going on over on another website, and if things go well, I might be a published writer soon! So, keep your fingers crossed, and once again, you all have my deepest apologies! Also... wow._

 _How the hell did this story manage to land a whopping 86 followers with only ten chapters?_

 _The world never ceases to amaze me._

* * *

 **Chapter Ten: The Struggle Begins**

Meg slowly woke up to the sound of quiet snickers, clicking, and the feeling of someone poking her arm.

Shifting a bit, she let out a soft sigh and turned her head to the side so her hair could shield her face. Her whole upper body was hurting like crazy from all of the exertion she'd put herself through the previous day. She weakly buried her face in the crook of her arm in an effort to rid herself of the snickering, but still, it wouldn't go away and she only felt herself being poked further, which made her arm twitch.

Something rustled against her bare back... then her... butt?

Meg nearly had a stroke when something extremely sharp poked bare skin on her upper thigh, and her eyes snapped open wide in alarm: with a terrified flail, she tried to scream with no result whatsoever and rolled off of her bed by accident. In the confusion that ensued, she ended up bashing her temple against the side table.

She saw stars and let out a breathy wheeze, clutching her forehead and flopping around.

"NYAHAHAHAHAHA!" Peter cackled, pointing at her with a triumphant smirk. "Time for school, Meg! Get up! You have a big day ahead of you!"

Holding her aching head, Meg blinked blearily up at her father's silhouette; realizing she'd left her glasses on the nightstand, she weakly tried to push herself upright, but before she could get there, Peter grabbed her clean under the arms and lifted her into the air. She would have kicked and shouted at him for doing it, but... well, neither of those things were possible.

She dangled precariously, clutching down on his hands with her armpits and silently praying he wouldn't drop her.

But her prayers were always ignored.

Almost abruptly, he let go of her and she face-planted on the mattress.

"All right, time to get you dressed. Meg!" Peter cheerfully exclaimed, making her heart freeze; he grabbed her arm and forced her to sit up, and before she realized what was happening, he dragged the hospital gown off. Meg would have screamed at the top of her lungs if she'd been able to.

She would have run away.

But once again...

Her fear skyrocketed and she curled up on herself, clutching her chest with both arms and using as much of her hair as possible to hide herself from view. Her dad walked over to the closet, humming a little tune as he pulled out something that she couldn't see, and with little fanfare he leaned down and jerked her legs out.

Meg fell over on her back, eyes growing wide.

Her whole body locked up since she couldn't feel what he was doing.

Then he stepped back, nodded with a sound of approval, and did something else.

Then he grabbed her arm and jerked her upright.

 _Why is he doing this?_ she silently panicked, flailing as he slid what she assumed was a bra over her head. _H-he's not going to make a pass at me like that one time he tried going redneck, right?!_

The thought very nearly made her pass out, which was something she was utterly _terrified_ of doing around him anyway.

Before she could ponder it any further, however, he roughly jerked a shirt over her head and stepped back.

"There you go, Meg!" Peter chuckled, then turned around and waved. "All dressed! But oh, your glasses!"

Meg blinked when bent down and grabbed something... then he leaned close to her.

And just like that, she could see.

Blinking rapidly at her surroundings, Meg glanced at herself and stiffened, eyes widening when she realized her father had, for whatever reason, dressed her in a pleated black skirt and a mauve, plaid turtleneck sweater that she _knew_ belonged to her mother. She'd seen Lois wear this outfit a few times during the holiday season or for special events.

Feeling confused, she watched as he slid some dark navy socks on her feet and put some...

 _Wait..._ Meg muttered, furrowing her brows. _Are those new shoes? What's going on?_

She finally looked at her Dad, and to her surprise, realized he was actually dressed up nice for a change.

"All right, Meg," Peter chuckled, tying her laces before pulling her wheelchair over with a cardboard cutout smile. "Let's go! Into the chair!"

She stared at him with wary eyes, then looked around for her hat.

To her horror, it was nowhere to be found.

 _I had it last night,_ she panicked, eyes flitting around the room. _Where is it?!_

"Peter, is she up and dressed yet?!" Lois crabbily barked from downstairs. "Hurry up!"

"Coming Lois," he cheerfully called, then roughly grabbed Meg under the arms and dropped her in the rustbucket of a wheelchair. "All right, Meg, let's head downstairs! Daddy's making a change for the better because he _loves_ you!"

Shock flooded through her.

As she was passing the nightstand, she saw the sketch pad and snatched it just as her father wheeled her towards the stairs. She felt her heart fly up her throat, since she assumed he was going to dump her down them or something similarly heinous... but to her disbelief, the moment she cringed, he simply lifted the wheelchair and carried her down the stairs one step at a time until she was safely on the the living room carpet.

"Good morning, Meg," Lois called, forcing a grin that twitched and writhed; her eyelid jerked for several seconds before she looked away and walked back into the kitchen; two seconds later, she walked out with some toast and jam, which she handed to her stunned daughter. "Here's some breakfast. Chris has already gone ahead. Have a good day at school."

Meg took the toast with shaky hands, then looked at her mother in sheer confusion.

This was the first time in her whole life that her parents had ever been thoughtful towards her.

It was so shocking that she could hardly believe it, but... was it really possible?

Was it possible that the accident had made them realize that they actually cared for her?

Had they decided to try and change?

These thoughts were so overwhelming that her eyes filled with tears and she smiled at Lois.

For real.

To the point that it touched her eyes and she felt it light her heart up from the inside out.

Her mother's eyes narrowed a little and she turned to walk away, plastering another chalky smile on her face. Then Peter was wheeling her towards the front door. Looking down at her toast, Meg's hazel-green eyes shimmered and she took a big bite, savoring the possible dreams behind it.

Savoring the flavor of possible acceptance.

But then the door opened, and that flavor turned to ash on her tongue.

Meg slowly lowered her hands and stared when she saw the crowd of reporters standing on her property. Cameras began flashing in her eyes as she looked at them, not understanding what was going on... but then, she looked up at her father.

The smile he'd given her earlier, his behavior, the clothes...

Suddenly, it all made sense.

The pieces of Meg's already-busted heart cracked even further and she lowered her head, staring at the toast that she'd been given. To have gotten her hopes up like that had been the biggest mistake of her entire life. She should have known that her parents would never do anything nice for her unless there were ulterior motives involved.

She didn't look up at the people taking photos at her. She didn't respond to the questions people were throwing at her.

She didn't even notice the microphones being thrust in her face. She heard nothing, felt nothing, saw nothing but that strawberry jam toast resting in her small, white hands. In that moment, when all she could taste was grit and dry ash, she closed her eyes and let it drop to the ground.

She didn't even raise her eyes when Peter lifted the wheelchair and set it into the back of their red family-sized SUV. All she knew was that her heart hurt, and the start of living hell was about to begin. She watched as the scenery passed by, not even noticing the way Peter was watching her in the rear-view mirror.

"Hey, Meeeeeg," he drawled, making her turn and look at him with glazed eyes. "BRACE YOURSELF!"

Without warning, the car swerved and she went flying to the right, smacking her already-throbbing head on the window so hard that the safety glass actually cracked. Her father's eyes widened when she clutched her temple in agony and he stomped on the brakes, throwing her forward. The red car came to a screeching halt in the middle of the road.

Meg couldn't even open her eyes, but she heard her father getting out past her ringing ears.

Involuntary tears were streaming out of her eyes, so when she opened them, her vision was exceedingly blurry.

"Lois is gonna kill me!" Peter cried, clutching his hair. "Look at what you've done now, Meg! You cracked the window!"

Frankly, she didn't really care. She was hurting too much, in more ways than one, to really give a shit.

Swallowing, she hunched down and cupped the side of her head, ignoring Peter's grumbling as he got back in and started driving. The rest of the trip to school was thankfully uneventful, aside from her dad's fake smile and his half-assed attempts at trying to look like a good parent in front of everyone. When she was finally on solid ground, Peter walked close to her.

"Have a good day, Meeeg," he drawled, then inconspicuously stood behind her and farted near her head. "Be a good girl."

Feeling a spark of rage, she smacked the writing pad on her lap, gripped the rusted wheels on her chair, and heaved, forcing the ugly metal beast to roll across the sidewalk towards the front entrance. Students all over the place stopped and turned to stare at her as she fought to make it to the front doors.

But nobody came over to offer any help.

Not even Chris, who inconspicuously slid into the building, looking like he was about to cry.

Meg was so tired and sweaty by the time that she made it to the school's front doors that she felt like she'd run a marathon... she was relieved when she managed to grab the door handle. That relief, unfortunately, came to an abrupt end when the door crashed open and swung right into the chair. Meg flailed her arms, eyes widening as she lost her balance.

Then the world tilted and she was lying flat on the ground, blinking up at the sky.

And to her horror, the skirt she was wearing flipped and landed on her face. With the speed of a snake, she smacked the skirt back down to cover the underwear she prayed she was wearing, hoping that nobody had seen. After all, her father had been the one who'd dressed her. Knowing him, he could have put a diaper on her or something.

"Wow," a familiar voice sneered, making Meg wince. "You're wearing panties with pink teddy bears on them? What are you, like, five?"

Connie DiMico.

Of course.

Out of everyone who could have seen such an embarrassing thing, it had to have been her mortal enemy.

Meg's legs dangled uselessly over the edge of the chair when she twisted her upper torso, struggling to pull herself out of such a precarious position. And as she did so, Connie walked into her line of sight with folded arms, looking down her nose at her. Those arctic blue eyes glimmered with grim pleasure when Meg glanced up at her.

"Well, looks like you're finally where you belong _,_ " she crooned, stepping forward and leaning down with her hands neatly folded behind her back. "Lying in the dirt like the trash you are."

Meg didn't respond to the jab.

Merely blinked and let out a sigh, then resumed her struggle to get out of the toppled wheelchair.

Connie's eyes narrowed and she abruptly stomped on her stomach.

"Don't ignore me, bitch," she said in that honey-coated tone of sheer venom. "Say something, come on."

Meg gasped for breath, then weakly gestured at her throat and shook her head, pleading with her eyes.

Connie apparently didn't understand, if the narrowing of those ice blue eyes was any indication.

When the blonde girl pressed down harder on her stomach, spots flitted in front of Meg's vision.

So she did the only thing she could do: Meg grabbed her leg and held it gently, almost tenderly, without breaking eye contact. For several seconds, the pressure became unbearable, to the point where she thought she would pass out.

Then, someone grabbed Connie's shoulder and roughly pulled her away.

"HEY!" Connie barked, whirling around. "Get your filthy... oh..."

To her shock, she found herself staring straight into the stormy eyes of Principle Sheppard.

"My office," he growled, jerking his thumb over his shoulder with a flinty expression, "now, DiMico."

"But sir!" she gasped, eyes widening in feigned innocence. "Whatever for?! I was simply helping Meg! She fell over!"

"Is that so?" he asked, quirking a brow when she gave him an angelic smile and nodded, clasping her hands together with a cute quirk of her head. "Then please, explain to me how knocking a wounded girl out of her wheelchair and then stomping on her stomach classifies as helping her? I'm afraid that I find myself rather confused!"

"I didn't mean to knock her out of the chair," Connie chirped, lowering her eyes and looking at Meg with an expression that made her feel sick all the way down to her core. That smile was the most fake thing she'd ever seen. "I didn't mean to step on her, either! Really! She grabbed my ankle after I did it, so I wasn't able to move my foot!"

"Uh huh," the principle droned, then gestured again. "Feel free to tell your parents that."

When she realized that her innocent act wasn't going to work, Connie's face darkened and turned snide.

"My parents will take my side no matter what you do or say, you old fatass," she snipped, tossing her hair. "After all, this is Meg we're talking about. Nobody gives a shit about her anyway, so who cares if I stomp on her? She's garbage anyway."

"Good to know," the Principle confirmed, turning and pointing at the doors. "Now, since you seem so set on having a debate, why don't you head to my office and think of a good one to present to your parents this afternoon again, hmm? After all, I'm sure they're already SO thrilled about the classroom window you and your friends broke."

Connie twitched and she stared at him, mouth hanging open.

"That was Meg, not me!" she exclaimed, stomping her foot. "The nerve you have! Hmph!"

Tossing her hair a second time, she swept off and headed into the building with her pretty little nose in the air.

Once she was gone, the principle looked down at Meg, who was still struggling to free herself... and sighed. With a very solemn expression, he leaned down and forcibly righted the wheelchair with her still sitting in it. Blinking rapidly, Meg nervously patted the skirt down and raised her eyes just as her notepad was dropped back onto her lap.

She glanced at her principle.

"Come see me after school today," he said softly, setting a gentle hand on her shoulder. "We need to have a talk."

Meg blinked and nodded, watching in confusion as he walked behind her.

She stretched, trying to see what he was doing, but then the wheelchair jolted.

Mr. Sheppard's breath audibly caught, and the chair jerked a few more times.

"The nerve of those..." he suddenly hissed. "How could they...?"

Meg didn't know what he was talking about, but she assumed it was about the state her wheelchair was in. With little fanfare, he literally walked around to the side of the chair and picked the whole thing up. Meg flinched when he hastily carried it inside with her still sitting in it. She shrank down in shock and peered up at him through her glasses.

She could tell by the look on his face that it wasn't easy.

In fact, hauling her like this was probably exhausting.

She was relieved when he set her down in front of nurse Anna's office.

"Wait here," he commanded, then walked inside the room and closed the door.

 _Not like I have a choice,_ Meg mentally sighed, hooking a disheveled strand of hair behind her ear. _Still, why did he carry me all the way down the hall? I could have gotten here myself, even if it did take forever._

Her thoughts came to an abrupt halt when he came out with Nurse Anna in tow.

"Oh, my God..." the blonde woman gasped, eyes widening in shock. "You weren't kidding..."

"And that is precisely why I came to you," the principle growled, folding his arms. "I never make requests like this unless it's absolutely necessary."

"Necessary is right," Anna muttered, kneeling down beside the chair and smiling at Meg with sorrow swimming in her bright blue eyes. "Hi, sweetheart... how are you holding up?"

Meg returned her smile with a faint one of her own and shrugged with one arm, hiding her eyes with her hair.

She felt naked without her Beanie on... she didn't like the feeling of her hair freely moving around.

"So, can you?" Principle Sheppard asked, tapping his foot. "Or not?"

"Well," Anna sighed, leaning forward and jerking on the wheels; her brows wrinkled when they didn't budge. "Okay, yeah, I guess I'll have to. Even a powerhouse like officer Swanson would have trouble with a chair like this. Wait here."

When she stood up, heading into her office again, Meg opened her sketch pad and looked around for a pencil. Her eyes landed on a pen sticking out of Mr. Sheppard's pocket, so she tapped his side to get his attention and gestured at it. Looking confused, he pulled it out and handed it to her, watching as she popped the cap off and started writing. He tilted his head to see better when she held the pad up.

 _'What are you doing?'_

"You'll see," he said simply, then gave her a loaded look. "I take it the news about your voice was true, then."

Meg nodded, then put the cap on the pen and tried to hand it back, but he made no move to take it.

"Keep it. It doesn't look like you have your backpack with you today."

When she glanced around, she realized that he was right and blinked, shoulders slumping.

Then Anna came out of the office, holding a... a...

Meg's eyes widened in shock.

She was holding a wheelchair.

A real one, with big, shiny stainless steel wheels, a padded leather seat, and actual armrests. She felt a lump forming in her throat when nurse Anna set the chair up and patted it. Then, moving forward, the woman gently slid an arm around her waist and lifted her off the rust bucket she'd been given.

Her eyes drifted closed when she was set down on the new chair, wondering if she was dreaming.

Having a wheelchair like this was so much of an improvement that it almost gave her the urge to hope.

But she couldn't, because there was no real hope to be had.

"Much better," Anna sighed, smiling at her; then she glared at the chair Meg had originally been sitting in and gripped the handles. "I'll take this to the garbage. It looks more like a Tetanus hazard than a wheelchair."

When she shuffled away, muttering something about incompetent people, Mr. Sheppard set a hand on her head.

"Get to class," he murmured softly. "I have a certain troublemaker to deal with. But remember, come to my office after school today. I have something important I wish to discuss with you."

Meg nodded, looking at her new wheelchair with dazed eyes.

Lifting a trembling hand, she pushed on the wheels... and to her absolute shock, they glided across the floor with such ease that she almost broke down and started crying. Instead, she choked back her feelings and gave Principle Sheppard her biggest smile and headed down the hall towards her first class.

After all, she still had some pride, damn it!

Her first day back at school after having such an awful accident... it wouldn't be that bad, would it?

She was sure her luck might have been changing.

She was sure that perhaps this new chair was a sign of better things to come.

A sign of hope.

But as luck would have it, the moment she rounded the first corner, she bumped into none other than Michael Pulaski. Furious amber eyes shot down at her, making Meg freeze and swallow nervously. She suddenly felt as if she was taking up too much of the hallways with this suddenly huge new wheelchair.

His eyes darted to her head, then narrowed and flicked down to her clothes.

"The hell are you wearing?" he demanded. "You look like a prissy catholic girl."

Meg's hands jumped to the armrests of her chair, leaning back in it to get as far away from him as possible.

Even though they had a deal, and even though he'd come to visit, he was still so fucking scary it hurt.

For god's sake, he was wearing a varsity jacket with their school logo on it over a tank top, and a pair of tattered blue jeans. A look that had given him the popularity he presently had. Hell, he even had a 'Save The Whales' sticker on his binder, which was the definition of irony since she had frequently been compared to one over the years... but his eyes made him chilling.

Those fierce irises the color of burning honey were too piercing for her to handle.

They made him seem like he could see through anybody.

And for someone as emotionally fragile and insecure as Meg, that was a big no-no.

Hands shaking, she lifted the pad and jerkily wrote a response, which he squinted at.

 _'My dad picked this outfit out, since there were reporters camped outside my house.'_

"Seriously?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "So, just because of a few reporters, your old man forced you to dress up like a nun? I think this is actually the first time I've ever seen you without that hat of yours, Beanie Girl... I've never even seen you wear anything but the same old jeans and varying shades of pink."

Meg frowned, then wrote a lengthy response and reluctantly held the pad up.

 _'Pink happens to be my favorite color, so why wouldn't I wear it? The only control I had over my life back then was what I wore each day, so I wore what I felt like. And pink stuff always cheers me up a little.'_

Mike's other brow rose and he stared at the response, looking mildly surprised.

"Huh, that's actually a bit surprising," he snorted, giving her an askance look. "I never would have pinned you as a girly girl."

Meg actually cracked an amused smirk as she wrote her reply and held the pad up.

 _'If you think me wearing pink is girly, you should see my bedroom. I have the girliest room ever, full of posters,_ _stuffed animals, and everything pink.'_

To her immense surprise, a slow smirk spread across Mike's face.

"Maybe I'll take you up on that offer," he retorted, making her blink; then he jerked a thumb over his shoulder and tilted his head back with a cocky expression. "Anyway, bell's about to ring and I don't want Fielding to ride my ass about being late again, so I'll catch ya later. Good to see that the bet's still on."

Meg rolled her eyes and wrote down her response.

 _'I'll survive the bullying headed my way. I can last two months.'_

He was silent for a few seconds after reading that, and for a moment his eyes narrowed.

Meg suddenly found her skirt very interesting. It was a nice shade of black. The next thing she knew, she was being pushed down the hall. Giving a small gasp of surprise, Meg jolted. She quickly realized that this was what she would probably hate the most about being in a wheelchair. Feeling as if she were at the mercy of anyone. If they so wished, they could just give her wheelchair a light shove and send her rolling down the hallway.

And speaking of hallways…

The hallways, which had previously held about maybe seven students, now seemed to contain about fifty. People pressed in from all sides, and Meg suddenly realized everyone's eyes were on her, and those girls muttering across the hall were talking about her, and everyone was snickering that she was a total loser.

"Come on," Mike muttered, pressing a hand on the back of her wheelchair and pushing her to the side of the hallway, as everyone seemed to be walking in the middle of it. Meg felt a little better now that she knew he wasn't going to pummel her. In fact, he was being surprisingly helpful.

The walls were painted a rather pleasant, periwinkle blue color, while the floor was a beige.

Concentrating on the colors was rather comforting.

Colors, in general, were comforting to Meg since she liked to associate them with things.

"Don't get used to this," Mike suddenly muttered. "I'm only doing this because I'll look bad if I don't."

Meg craned her head to the right to look up at him, but he was staring down the hall.

All eyes seemed to be on them.

Meg nervously picked at the hem of her plaid sweater. She would be the only one in a wheelchair, the one person in school who couldn't use her legs. The one who was a weirdo without any friends. And, all too suddenly, they were at the door to her first period of the day.

"Here you go," Mike grumbled, "last stop."

Meg wrote something down in her pad and held it up, peeking at him from above the edge of the paper.

 _'Thank you for helping me.'_

He blinked, before letting go of her wheelchair, and walking away.

"Like I said, don't get used to it," he sneered, waving once without looking back. "Catch ya later, _Girly Girl._ I can't call you Beanie Girl without the damn beanie, so make sure you wear your regular clothes next time you show up. I _really_ don't like that outfit you've got on. It makes you look like an old hag from the sixties."

Meg winced at the insult and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath to steady herself.

Then she glanced down at her clothes through her lashes.

The skirt wasn't really all that bad, and the navy socks with the black loafers she could handle.

They actually looked rather cute and girly together, and it probably _would_ have been her style if she'd been thin enough to wear them and still _look_ good. But the turtleneck sweater was out of style, and rather unpleasant-looking on her. It really did look like something the sixties had spit out at her.

Meg lifted her eyes and watched Mike disappear around the corner, before turning her head back to the classroom. It seemed almost full.

Now, to face the true horror.

Class.


	12. Chapter 11: Going Too Far

**Chapter Eleven: Going too Far**

Her chair had been removed.

Hell, her desk had been removed, too, just like last time.

And it was all because she'd gotten Connie in trouble that morning.

The whole school knew about it, and that's why the bullying was as intense as it was today. Thankfully, with her wheelchair, all Meg really had to do was write on her own lap, so that's what she did. Her first two classes had come and gone in an unpleasant blur, since people had taken advantage of her crippled state to do cruel things to her.

She'd already had two garbage cans dumped on her head, and a few minutes ago, one of her classmates had sabotaged the pencil shaver so she'd had an excuse to move it.

Then, in a spectacular manner, she'd made a show of tripping and emptied the whole thing on her.

Now, she was near the end of her third class, enduring the next stage of bullying.

Spitting.

 _Just have to get through this hour,_ she silently told herself, scrawling the answers to her schoolwork and wincing every time another wad of fluid hit her each time the teacher looked away. _Then I have lunch, and I can get away from this hellhole..._

She hunched her shoulders and ducked down, trying to shield her paper as she wrote.

To little avail.

Now and then, a glob of spit landed on it.

Not like being spit on was anything new... even her own family had done it once, although, the reason for it had been much more serious than petty hate since her house had been broken into by armed robbers.

It had been one of the worst nights of her life.

When she'd heard the crashes coming from downstairs, she'd come running out of her room, and her father had intentionally hit her with a baseball bat. Then, after they'd gone into the home security room to hide, Peter had somehow convinced everyone that Meg could make it downstairs long enough to call the police.

They'd all spit on her and forcibly shoved her into an opening the size of a freaking doggie door, but when she'd finally made it down to the kitchen, her father had intentionally alerted the robbers that she'd been trying to call the police.

As a result, she'd been taken hostage the whole night.

And, unfortunately, she'd been felt up more than a little.

Like with Mike Pulaski, when they'd put their hands on her, she'd gone somewhere else inside her head and had imagined herself being over-the-top flirty and seductive, to the point where her ugliness had grossed the two robbers out.

In reality, she'd been groped for over a half an hour with a gun against her chin. It had been an extreme relief that the police had arrived when they had, otherwise things might have taken a horrific turn.

School, on the other hand, was different.

The bullies that inhabited the building were like cockroaches, scuttling in her peripheral vision, anticipating the moment she would so much as glance at them so they could tear her down. She'd been a punching bag for others for as long as she could remember and she tried so, _so_ hard to not let it bother her.

But it hurt. It hurt her so much sometimes she couldn't breathe.

It wasn't just physical – being told that she was worthless and should just die all the time just really fucked with her.

Another glob of spit hit the back of her head.

"Die."

There was that word again. Spoken by the girl sitting directly behind her. The pain in her lungs was nearly crippling. Meg flinched when a glob of spit landed on her glasses. Then, by some miracle, the bell rang and the whole class erupted into a flurry of action.

Meg instantly folded her work paper up and rolled her way past her classmates, ignoring the way they kicked her wheelchair. She set the paper on the teacher's desk and hastily made a u turn for the door, rocketing out into the hall and speeding down toward's the girl's bathroom.

Once she was there, she gripped the sink and heaved herself upright, skinny arms shaking with the effort.

Tugging her deadened legs out of the chair, she dragged herself onto the bathroom counter and looked in the mirror, assessing the damage done to her clothes. Part of her wondered when this sort of thing had become a routine, but wondering would change nothing, so she squashed that part down.

Turning the faucet on with a sigh, she removed her glasses and dunked her hair under the water, rinsing the spit out of it. Then she moved onto her clothes. Scooting her way across the counter, she snatched a paper towel and soaked it before proceeding to scrub the front of her clothes off.

Thankfully, the wheelchair had prevented any spit from landing on her back or shoulders, so she was able to get the disgusting fluid off fairly easy. Finally as clean as she could possibly be, she carefully cleaned her glasses, then slid back into her chair and rolled her way over to the hand driers. Not for the first time in her life, she was grateful that her school had automatic air drying technology.

Within minutes, her clothes and her were completely dry.

Meg smoothed her hair out to the best of her ability, then turned the wheelchair and rolled back into the hall.

Determined to get away from everyone, she began to push herself past the chattering students.

She ignored the eyes that landed on her as she did so, determined as she was.

But then... she heard it.

"Hey, Griffin!"

Meg's shoulders tensed and her arms froze, wheelchair slowly rolling to a stop.

She knew who it was.

And she knew what it was about.

Slowly turning the wheelchair, she spotted him coming.

Jared.

His dark eyes were even darker with fury, and it actually made her hair stand on end.

He sneered the moment he saw her shrink.

She half expected him to kick her or do something awful... but instead, all he did was casually grab the back of the chair's handlebars and push her down the hall. She squeezed the front of her skirt as the hallway began to roll past, eyes widening and cheeks going bone white.

 _This can't be good,_ she panicked, frantically looking around. _Where is he taking me?!_

"So," he growled, making her whole body flinch. "I heard about what you did this morning. You got Connie suspended for an entire week. Now, why'd ya have to go and do a thing like that, hmmm?"

Meg couldn't respond, and he knew it.

"I have a responsibility to Connie as her boyfriend. You should have just kept your head down."

Meg felt a cold chill run through her entire body when she realized the path he was taking. In their whole school, there was only one set of stairs going down from the first floor, and it led to a frequently visited shortcut between the cafeteria and the hall he was pushing her down.

She didn't want to believe he would do something this dangerous to her.

It wasn't possible.

She was crippled, she couldn't talk, or even walk, so...

So that just made it easier.

Meg's heart flew up her throat when he turned around the corner.

The stairs ahead reflected in her glasses, making her pulse pound in her ears. Jared's pace slowed quite a bit as they moved forward... but then, he jerked her to a halt.

"Damn, that's a long way down, isn't it?" Jared whispered into her ear, making her shiver. "You only have yourself to blame, Meg. Bye bye."

And just like that, he shoved her forward.

Meg squeezed her eyes shut when her wheelchair went flying... then she was falling.

Separated from the chair, she fell forward and the ground came rushing up to meet her.

But instead of hitting cold tile, she landed on something soft.

Her legs dropped and dangled beneath her body when her jaw smacked into something that smelled like old spice. Eyes squeezed shut, all she could do was pray... but then, she slowly began to feel again. Somehow, her subconscious had prepared her for agony, so her nerves had temporarily shut off.

Two strong arms were wrapped around her middle, and something that felt like leather was beneath her chin. Tentatively opening her eyes, Meg jerkily shifted her head, spotting a shock of soft blonde hair.

"Alister... the hell did you just try to do?" a familiar voice growled into her ear. "Are you _trying_ to kill her?!"

"Naw, man," Jared snickered from behind. "Just wanted to teach her a lesson."

Meg's face contorted when his arms tightened around her middle to the point where her ribs popped.

"Well, that lesson of yours might have landed you in prison if I hadn't been in the right place in the right time," Mike Pulaski snorted, shifting Meg's body and unexpectedly hefting her over his broad shoulder like a sack of potatoes. "She's still healing from a back injury, dude. That fall _could_ have _killed_ her."

"Psh, who cares?" Jared mocked, making Meg's eyes slowly slide closed. "Since you seem to have this situation so under control, why don't you take over instead? A little bruise here and there, for Connie's sake."

Silence filled the hallway, and Michael's left arm tightened around her waist yet again.

"Fine," he said simply, then bent down and snatched the edge of her chair before stalking down the hall. "I guess it wouldn't hurt. Gives me an excuse to release a bit of steam."

Meg's heart flew up her throat, but then she remembered the deal they had with each other.

She almost relaxed.

Almost.

But then...

"Sweet!" Jared called. "Meet me in the hall by the cafeteria! I'll gather a crowd to watch like last time!"

Mike's footsteps faltered for a second, then resumed at a much, much slower pace.

"Shit..."

The sound of his curse made her heart pound all over again. Carrying her down the hall, he made his way toward the other set of stairs. Meg's hair was upside down, sliding back and forth across his back as she lay draped over his shoulder, bleakly staring at the red fabric of his varsity jacket, not having the strength to move her upper torso. Lifting herself would have required her to use back muscles she couldn't flex anymore.

Dread flooded through her, however, when she heard the sound of chatter in the distance.

They'd reached the top of the stairs.

With every step Mike took, uncertainty fluttered within her heart.

What would he do once they arrived?

Would he stick up for her?

Would he tell off everyone who'd been picking on her?

He had, after all, come to visit her in the hospital... and the little acts of kindness here and there had to mean something, right?

But no.

Her hopes were in vain, because the moment he rounded the corner, his weight shifted and he literally chucked her body down the hall with all of his strength. Meg hit the ground hard, smacking her head against the tile and nearly knocking herself out in the process; it was hard to hear anything but the ringing that had dominated her head. She heard muffled laughter and felt things hitting her chest and face.

She could vaguely see a crowd of students coming closer, chucking things at her, holding their phones up.

Then Mike began to advance, shoulders hunched, amber eyes practically glowing like a demon's.

Heart pounding, Meg slowly began to crawl away from him, dragging herself backwards since he only kept coming.

The students that had formed a circle around them were smiling, laughing, egging him on.

Face screwing up, she struggled to pull herself backwards until she felt the metal lockers touching her shoulders. And yet, Mike only kept coming, and the students drew closer, surrounding her like the vultures they were and holding their phones out. Meg struggled to get up, but her legs were useless.

She stared up at Mike through her glasses, huddled against the lockers, whole body shaking.

Then he lunged, and she covered her face with her arms.

Instead of hitting her, however, he gripped her wrists and pinned them against the lockers. She found herself staring clean into the burning amber irises that scared her so badly. It was like looking into the fires of hell.

Sinking down and squatting, he pinned her against the lockers and leaned as close to her nose as possible. She'd never been this close to another male's face since the incident with Glen Quagmire.

Being this close dragged up the memory of giving that asshole her first kiss.

Several students started laughing when she squirmed a little, struggling to move her wrists and swallowing the lump in her throat when he simply stared at her.

"She's like a bug in a spiderweb!" someone hollered. "Damn, she can't even move!"

Meg shivered when he leaned close to her ear.

She could feel warm breath on her neck, and it scared her.

"Listen up," he growled, thick eyebrows furrowed. "I'm going to move now, and when I do, you'd better not even twitch. If you do, the bet is off... and I'll personally make your life living hell from here on out."

She shivered at the blatant threat in his eyes.

But when he lifted his left arm from her wrist, she didn't react.

Her hands trembled, but she didn't budge an inch.

Her mouth quivered when he lifted his hand and brought it close to her face, but instead of touching her cheeks or her forehead, he grabbed her glasses and jerked them off her face. Meg winced when he threw them off to the side.

"Look at me."

His voice was low and threatening.

It made her stomach knot up.

Reluctantly, she opened her eyes and stared at his blurry face, feeling lightheaded.

She couldn't see what he was doing, or his eyes, so that made it better... but also a hundred times worse.

Then, he leaned forward.

And the whole hallway went dead quiet within seconds.

For several moments, not a single sound went through the hallway.

Meg blinked, wanting to look and see what everyone was so quiet about, but his warning kept her still. His grip on her wrist unexpectedly tightened, making her flex her fingers a little... but then, his other hand grabbed and fisted in her hair. Tight, he pushed her head back against the lockers, and she couldn't understand why.

"Oh... my... God..." someone finally whispered. "No... way!"

"Dude, is he serious?!" someone hissed. "Is he really...?!"

"Take this somewhere else," Jared's voice suddenly commanded. "It's fucking disgusting to watch."

Mike's hand clenched so hard that Meg's wrist popped.

She had to bite her tongue to force back the scream of agony that wanted to claw its way up her throat. Mike finally leaned back and turned away from her face.

"What are you gonna do if I say no, Jared?" he cockily demanded. "I don't know if you got the memo, but I do whatever the hell I want _whenever_ I want to do it. Hell, if I wanted to _fuck_ Megan Griffin here and now, you couldn't say shit about it, could you? I mean, not like it's a secret I could kick your ass from here to China, is it?"

Meg went bone cold in her stomach the moment she heard him say that.

Her entire body tensed up and she started shivering uncontrollably, but Jared merely folded his arms. His next words were spoken with such an icy tone of disgust that his voice alone could have frozen hell completely solid.

"I'm not too worried about that," he said simply, "after all, you know what the consequences of being nice to her are."

Meg squinted at everyone's blurry forms with a blank face.

Trying to process what the hell was going on and what they were all talking about.

But then, Mike's hand grasped the front of her shirt.

And without taking his eyes off of Jared's, he ripped her turtleneck right down the middle. Meg jumped and tried to fight him when the tear exposed her bra and stomach, but he snatched her hair and kept her head pressed against the lockers. She went lightheaded, and everyone who'd been laughing uncertainly fell silent.

"Well?" Mike demanded, quirking a brow. "You gonna stand there and watch me? Or are you gonna get the hell out of my face?"

Meg's face went white as a ghost and she attempted to mouth ' _what are you doing?!'_ at him, but his fist tightened.

So much that she saw spots.

She couldn't breathe.

He only lessened the pressure when she shut her mouth again.

"Psh, do what you want," Jared snorted, stiffly heading into his classroom. "If this is how you want to play things, I hope you're ready to accept what happens. Have fun."

When he vanished into the classroom, terror nearly made Meg black out.

All of the other people around them followed. Many of the guys were catcalling and shouting vulgar things. A few other students, particularly the girls among the group, looked extremely worried and uncomfortable.

But none of them said anything or spoke against him.

Soon, Meg and Mike were alone.

When he turned and looked at her, he let go of her throat... and she opened her mouth to attempt screaming. Even if her voice wouldn't work, she could still try until it did. Before she could so much as take a breath, his hand smacked into her face and he grasped her jaw, covering her mouth.

She looked in his general direction in sheer fright.

For a long moment, he merely stared right at her... or glared... she assumed it was a glare.

Then, to her surprise, his hand drew back and he let go of her, standing up and grumpily dusting himself off. Walking across the hall, he bent down and grabbed something, then stalked back over and squatted again.

Suddenly, her glasses were on her face and she could see everything again.

She blinked at him in confusion when he roughly gripped her chin and looked at the side of her head where she'd hit the floor. His eyes narrowed, then flicked lower, to her exposed belly.

To her horror, his gaze landed on the puckered circular scar resting between her bra cups. His brows furrowed and he tried to look closer, but before he could really look at her chest area, she snatched her sweater and quickly dragged it closed.

A scowl slid across his face.

"Wipe that look off your face," he muttered, getting up and nudging her thigh. "As if I'd ever touch you."

She didn't move.

Merely looked up at him with wary eyes, wondering what he'd done, why everyone had left.

Why he'd ripped her shirt open.

She had so many unanswerable questions.

But then, before her very eyes, he unzipped his jacket and took it off, dropping it to the floor. Meg swallowed when she saw his arm muscles, which bulged beneath the white T-shirt he was wearing. She alone knew just how much muscle he had. She'd felt it up close and personal when he'd kicked the living tar out of her.

Then, to her utter shock, he lifted those ripped arms and took his shirt of completely.

Meg's eyes should have melted.

Or at the very least, she should have gone completely blind.

It was like looking at the figure of a Roman god.

Mike Pulaski may have been a bully, but he had a body that most guys could only dream of, with a hard six pack and defined abs and everything. He was chiseled from head to toe. Stunned, Meg watched could only stare at him with huge eyes.

Then he chucked his T-shirt at her and it landed on her face, blocking her view.

By the time she pulled it off, he was already jerking his jacket back on and zipping it up.

"Put that on," he commanded, pointing at the white shirt and turning around with a frown. "It'll look better than that piece of shit sweater you were wearing anyway. Damn thing was ugly as fuck."

Meg blinked herself back to the present, then looked down at her destroyed sweater.

With a sigh, she shrugged her destroyed shirt off, wondering how the hell he'd managed to rip a turtleneck in half. When she pulled on the white t-shirt he'd given her, she was assaulted by a strangely pleasant scent... a combination of men's deodorant, old spice, and something she couldn't identify.

Something distinctly male.

It weirded her out a little since she couldn't place it.

Meg finally gathered enough courage to try moving, pulling herself upright... but then, her wheelchair was right in front of her nose. And before she could react, she was being lifted beneath the arms and pulled into the air.

Then she was roughly dropped into the seat.

"Starting today," he grunted, gripping the back of the bars and shoving her down the hall, "I've decided to be your bodyguard. That incident with the stairs was going too far. He really _could_ have killed you doing that."

Meg swallowed, then leaned forward and pulled her sketch pad out from underneath the leather seat. She had been overjoyed to realize that real full-time wheelchairs had small, but very wide compartments beneath the butts. All she had to do was lift up the leather a bit to reveal it and grab what she needed.

Pulling her pen out as well, she scrawled down her thoughts and flipped the pad around, holding it above her head.

 _'What exactly did you do that made everyone go quiet?'_

"None of your business," he snorted. "You'll probably find out later, anyway, so don't bug me. Just shut up and enjoy the ride, all right? I'm getting you away from the cafeteria, then heading back and grabbing us some chow. After we eat and classes start up again, if anyone still bothers you, tell me who they are."

Meg blinked, eyes widening in shock.

 _He's serious,_ she realized, blinking rapidly. _He's really going to keep people from tormenting me..._

There was a part of her, as reluctant as she was to admit this to herself, that wanted to abuse this power she suddenly had and get revenge on everyone. But she didn't feed into it, both because she couldn't abuse this opportunity for fear of losing it and she didn't want to take advantage of Mike in general.

Mostly because he was now among the top ten people who were occasionally kind of nice to her.


	13. Chapter 12: Behind These Hazel Eyes

**Chapter Twelve: Behind These Hazel Eyes**

Meg's eyes wandered as she was pushed down the halls by Mike.

She glanced at the open classroom doors, glanced at the colors of the studious decorations along the walls, and kept her eyes fixated on the tiles beneath the rolling wheels of her chair. The only thing she refused to look at were the faces of the students they were passing. So many people stopped to stare at her and Mike that it was extremely uncomfortable. It was a relief when he turned her chair around, shouldered his way through the front doors, and dragged her outside.

A soft wind brushed against her cheeks when he turned and pushed her down the sidewalk towards the woods behind the school.

The chair jiggled when he rolled her onto the grass towards a large tree with an enormous green canopy.

He finally came to a stop beneath it, swung her around so she was facing the school, then let go of her chair and stepped into view. She lifted her eyes and looked up at him, feeling small in more than one way. His blonde hair and fair skin made him look almost ruggedly angelic in the sunlight, natural gold that shone like a halo. She sat there for a long moment, not moving much, just peering up at him through her glasses.

"I'll be back with some lunch," he finally muttered, cracking his neck and walking away from her. "Don't move from that spot."

She watched him go, watched as he disappeared from view, and then she was alone.

Meg let out a weary sigh and leaned against the seat of the chair, dropping her head back so she could stare at the sky.

Her hair drifted back in the breeze, reminding her that she would need to cut it again soon. She'd actually wanted to grow her hair out for a very long while now, but her circumstances wouldn't let her do it since long hair was easy for other people to grab. Considering the kind of situation she was in, it wouldn't be smart or safe for her to have it. She took a deep breath and let it out, closing her eyes when a breeze rippled across her body, ruffling her clothes.

In that moment of calm, all she could think about was her future.

She didn't know how things were going to end up.

She was eighteen years old and in her last year of high school.

Where would she go when it was over? She couldn't and wouldn't stay with her parents, but taking care of herself would be hard. She would have to find a job, but with a disability as severe as the one she now had, she was fairly certain her job opportunities had been more than halved, which was a nightmare scenario since the possibilities had already been pretty slim to begin with. Her biggest aspiration was to become a nurse, or something similar to one, but it was out of reach.

College was something she couldn't have since it was too expensive.

"Well, look who it is! If it isn't the cocky little Griffin herself!"

Meg's eyes shot open wide and her head flew up to see Jared leaning against a tree with a taunting sneer on his face.

When he'd arrived, she didn't know... but she was so sick of seeing him she could have vomited. She instantly tried to roll away from him, but he lunged forward and smashed his hands down on her armrests, making her flinch and draw back with her shoulders bunched up to her ears. He brought his face close to her own and smirked, eyes glinting with something that made him look frightening.

"Ah, ah, ah," he warned, wagging a finger in her face. "You're not going anywhere."

When he tried to touch her face, she jerked away from his hand, leaning as far to the left as she possibly could.

His smile twitched.

"Aww, don't be like that," he cooed, eyes narrowing when he tried to touch her face again and she leaned even further. "Come on, let's be cool 'kay?"

When she frantically shook her head and tried to move the wheels of her chair again, he gave up the charade.

With a snarl, his arm muscles bulged and he flipped the wheelchair on its side and Meg went with it. She landed with a muffled wheeze on the grass, blinking as she tried to figure out what he'd just done. When she tried to pull herself out of the chair, Jared lifted his foot and stomped on her back. She would have screamed if she'd had a voice since the pain that shot through her body was beyond agonizing.

It hurt so bad that she almost passed out.

When he lifted his foot again, she forced her body to roll over to shield her back against the ground, but his foot came down a second time on her chest. She wheezed in pain, but then he was raising his foot again, aiming for her face this time. Immediately covering her head with her arms and cowering behind them, she braced herself, but couldn't keep from flinching when his shoe hit her forearms hard enough to break them. She was lucky that they didn't, actually.

She waited for him to kick her again, but nothing happened.

Everything fell silent.

After about two minutes, she hesitantly lowered her arms and looked up at him, but he was holding his phone out, smirking at something.

Meg felt confused until she glanced down.

Her heart nearly stopped when she realized that her skirt had ridden up.

He was taking pictures of her underwear!

Like lightning, she dragged her skirt down, heart in her throat, pulse pounding in her neck.

"Aw, why'd you have to go and do that?" Jared sneered, leaning down and thrusting the phone into her face. "That just makes the video look like you don't want it, Meg, but I guess it doesn't matter. Everyone knows you're desperate enough to sleep with anyone, even if they beat the shit out of you."

Meg's heart nearly dropped out of her stomach.

Her eyes widened and she stared at him, askance, when he stood back up.

He turned slightly, as if he were going to walk away, but then he turned around and kicked her in the side. Her mouth came open and she squeezed her eyes shut as the breath was knocked out of her body. Once she was able to breathe, she tried to push herself upright, but he pressed his foot against her chest and pinned her against the grass again, leaning forward with a nasty grin.

The pressure made her still-healing injuries scream.

When he caught the rigid expression of pain on her face, he grinned even more widely and leaned on his foot.

"Say something, _Meg,_ " he hissed, putting an unbearable mount of pressure on her breasts. "Come on, the whole world's watching!"

The pressure of his foot began to hurt to the point where it was hard to breathe.

Lifting her arms, she struggled to push him off, then resorted to hitting his leg and clawing at his jeans.

She was seeing spots.

She couldn't breathe.

Her flails grew weaker as her head swam, and prickling spots filled her vision, blocking the sight of his sneer.

She was just starting to fade out completely when something completely unexpected happened: the foot crushing her body grew light and Jared was unexpectedly pulled off balance. She watched, confused, as he was jerked backwards and roughly thrown to the ground, and her eyes slowly lifted to find Mike standing in front of her, legs stiff and shoulders back, but every single muscle in his body tense, as if he were about to spring.

"If you're smart," Mike said quietly, raising his fists and cracking his knuckles, "you'll get the fuck out of my sight before I rearrange your face."

"Excuse me?" Jared sneered, getting to his feet and shaking his shirt out. "Who the fuck do you think you're talking to, Pulaski?"

"I'm talking to someone who doesn't know when to stop," he growled, rolling his head and cracking his thick neck. "I'm really hard to piss off, but you and everyone else have been messing with this same girl for _years_ now, and I'm not just going to let it happen anymore."

"Ooh, what'cha gonna do?" Jared taunted, turning his head and spitting at Meg—who flinched away. "You gonna beat the shit out of your own teammate? HA! Go ahead! Do it! You'll just get your ass kicked off the football team and then you can say goodbye to that sports scholarship you wanted."

In that instant, it happened... leaning down and lowering his head, Mike charged forward like the football player he was. Jared was obviously taken off guard since he looked stunned when he was knocked off his feet and body slammed, but before he could so much as let out a yell, Mike was straddling his chest and punching him in the face with all of his strength. Jared fought back, of course, but in the position he was in there was only so much he could do.

Meg watched in horror as Mike wailed on him, then finally stood up, breathing heavily.

Jared jerkily lunged to his feet, nose bloodied, eye blackened, lips puffy and split.

"Bitch!" he snarled, eyes watering in rage and pain. "Kiss that sports scholarship goodbye!"

"I applied for more than one scholarship, fucktard," Mike callously shot back, sneering at him in disgust. "Go ahead and kick me off the team. I don't give a shit. Football was getting boring and doctors are more respectable than athletes, anyway. I'd rather save lives than spend the rest of my life hanging around a group of stupid, sweaty guys."

"I thought you were above this filth," Jared said coldly, "but I guess you're right where you belong."

"Damn straight," Mike shot back, stepping forward and glaring down at him with eyes that burned like hellfire, "so don't _ever_ touch her again."

Jared balked when he turned around and made his way over to where Meg was lying, but she could only stare at him in equal parts awe and fear.

He looked more pissed than she'd ever seen him.

"Bitch!" Jared barked, glaring at them with furious brown eyes. "You're an idiot! Just you wait!"

"Get lost," Mike growled, bending down and lifting Meg into his arms, despite her flail of protest; when he looked at her, eyes flashing, she clamped up and turned her head away to avoid his glare since the sight of it put a knot in her stomach. "Hold still, Beanie Girl."

"Is she really that good of a fuck?"

Mike instantly turned to look at him, eyes burning with such a threatening expression that the boy went from beet red to bone white nearly instantaneously.

He backed off a step when the blonde boy turned, tilting his head with a warning expression.

"Wouldn't know since I haven't bothered tappin' it," he drawled, making Meg's eyes pop open wide in mortified shock, "but make no mistake, if you ever touch her again... we're going to have a serious problem. Because the next time, I'm not going to hold back, and that means you'll have some really pricey medical bills."

"Whatever," Jared muttered, turning around and limping away, "fucking cunt... you'll regret this."

Meg watched as he made his way around the corner, arms curled against her chest. Once he was gone, she looked up at Mike with a stunned expression. His eyes were fierce: his pupils had shrunk into pinpricks and almost seemed to glow gold as he stared in the direction her tormentor had disappeared.

The anger she saw there was actually kind of scary-looking.

But then he blinked and his eyes were suddenly back to normal.

When he glanced down at her, the fierceness she saw there had vanished and he was looking at her with something that wasn't so scary; she watched as his gaze flicked lower and landed on her arms, narrowing when he saw the bleeding scrapes Jared had inflicted when he'd kicked her. She stared with large eyes as a strangely pleasant feeling welled up inside her, blinking rapidly as it swept throughout her chest, not understanding it... or even why it made her heart flutter.

He had saved her.

He had actually come to her rescue when she'd really needed it.

"You all right?" Mike asked, eyebrows raising slightly in question. "Where else did he hurt you?"

Meg swallowed and hesitantly motioned to her chest, then swiveled a little and tried to touch her back, but she couldn't reach the spot Jared had kicked with his thick arms underneath her. Noticing what she was doing, he used his foot to right her wheelchair, but to her surprise he turned around and flopped down in it without warning. Her teeth clicked from the jolt that swept through her, but he quickly adjusted her legs and set them over the edge of the arm rest.

Her heart froze when he forcibly leaned her torso forward and lifted the back of the t-shirt he'd given her.

She heard him let out a low whistle.

"Ouch," he muttered, gently touching a specific spot along her back; she flinched since pain swept through it. "He whopped you good. It's already bruising."

Meg shrugged, since she didn't know how else to react. It wasn't like bruises were anything new to her. She could handle them easily enough. She thought it was over when Mike dropped the edge of the shirt and forced her to lean back, but when he tried to raise the front of her shirt, her mental alarm went off and she clasped the hem of it and held it down. He blinked when she looked at him with startled eyes, then frowned in a somewhat irritated fashion.

"I get that you're a girl," he muttered, looking her clean in the eye, "but you and I both know that if I really _wanted_ to do something, I could have done it already."

Meg swallowed and a shiver ran through her body, a shiver that he obviously felt if his frown was any indication, but he had a point.

He could have hurt her a hell of a lot earlier, even when she'd been able to walk, and she wouldn't have been able to do anything.

Not then, and not now.

 _Well, whatever,_ she silently told herself. _The worst that'll happen is he'll_ _call my scar a third nipple like everyone else and laugh. Not like I haven't heard it before._

With that thought in mind, she tentatively lifted the shirt and squeezed her eyes shut, feeling more than a little embarrassed. Her face began to grow hot and her ears burned when she turned her head away, unable to look at him, and total silence filled the air for a good thirty seconds... but then, something touched the scar. When she flinched, the odd pressure immediately disappeared, leaving her hands quivering.

She felt his hand touch another spot on her side, where a scar she'd practically forgotten about resided.

Then another place with a scar.

And another.

She felt wildly uncomfortable with his probing, and she wished she could say so, but she couldn't, so she dealt with it as he touched more spots along her abdomen.

"You can put your shirt down," he said in a strangely thick voice. "I've seen enough. It'll bruise by morning, but you'll be fine."

Meg instantly let go of the t-shirt and let out a disheveled breath of air. She kept her eyes fixed on the grass, shoulders bunched up to her ears, but then he rose without warning and she jumped, startled as she was once again lifted into the air. There wasn't even time to wonder what he was doing: Meg's glasses slid down her nose when he set her down in the chair, and she stared at him when he headed over to his bag and grabbed two wrapped sub sandwiches and two cartons of juice.

Without a word, he handed her the food and the drink, then flopped down in the grass beside her chair and started to eat.

She watched him for a few seconds, then did the same, unwrapping the sandwich and taking a bite of it.

They ate lunch in total silence.

By the time she was finished, the bell still hadn't rung, so she took the opportunity to pull her writing pad out.

Mike glanced at her when she wrote down what she wanted to say and held it up.

 _"Thank you for saving me."_

"Don't mention it," he muttered, running a hand through his hair. "It was part of our deal. I just decided to skip waiting a month."

Then, for whatever reason, he looked at her.

Meg felt uneasy because she could tell that something about his demeanor was suddenly a little off: his face didn't have a stoic or a scary expression for once, and he looked kind of apprehensive, almost as though he didn't know how to bring up an uncomfortable conversation. After taking a better glance at the expression on his face, she felt her stomach knot up. He looked really uncomfortable, which wasn't normal.

"Hey," he grumbled, taking a deep breath and uneasily running a hand through his messy hair a second time. "I… uh…"

When he trailed off, the different struggles of emotion searing across his face made her stomach feel queasy.

Swallowing her unease, she scribbled something on the pad and held it up.

 _"What is it?"_

When he read her question, he let loose a disheveled sigh.

"It's about those scars," he finally muttered, looking away with a deep grimace. "Mostly the one on your chest. How did you get them?"

Meg suddenly couldn't think: the only thing she could do was stare at him.

Hesitantly, she scribbled a response.

" _Why are you curious about my scars?_ "

Clearing his throat, Mike made a face that said he was struggling to find the right words. For a long moment he simply stared at her, and she suddenly forgot about her fear: his crystalline amber eyes seemed to cut into her soul, almost as though he knew exactly what she was feeling.

"Beanie girl," he sighed, deep voice vibrating her body as he stared at her, "you were shot by someone."

The weight on her chest tightened into a knot that settled into her gut.

Meg stared at him with enormous eyes, then wrote a frantic response.

" _How do you know?"_

She watched as his eyes flicked across the question.

"I can tell by the type of scar."

She scribbled another response.

 _"I could have shot myself. What makes you think someone else did it?"_

"Because I can tell that you didn't shoot yourself, too. It's visibly obvious."

Her third response came even quicker.

 _"You can you tell something like that just by looking at a scar?"_

He read it and snorted.

"Damn straight. There's no burn marks around the spot where the bullet entered," he explain, making her stare at him all over again; when he caught the weird way she was looking at him, his eyes slid to half mast. "My dad's a cop. The two of us watch a lot of forensic science crap every weekend. I know how guns work."

Her response was quick.

 _"So you're saying that the type of bullet scar I have can prove that I didn't shoot myself?"_

 _"_ Yeah. Of course it can."

Meg's eyes widened and she covered her mouth.

She hadn't ever really thought about that, but it did make sense.

"So, someone really did pull a gun on you," he muttered; when Meg jerked her eyes away from his, he grabbed her wrist and forced her to look at him. "What happened?"

For a second, something strange flickered behind his eyes and the urge to run away hit Meg so hard in the gut that it nearly winded her. Taking a deep breath, she calmed herself and tried to think of a lie to tell him; her mind started whirling for something to say that would get him off her back. She really wanted to tell him that the scar was extremely old, but she felt too numb and detached... taking a moment to pull her hand back, she tentatively scribbled a response.

 _"I don't remember. Are we done now?"_

 _"_ No, and I really don't like being lied to," he growled, "so just tell me the truth. _"_

A lie of any variety would have been suitable, but... somehow, her mind went blank. Panic set in when she realized she couldn't think of anything false to tell him, or even how to word it. So, after flipping through a multitude of different scenarios, she finally sighed and decided to tell the truth.

It wasn't like her father deserved defending anyway.

Quite the contrary, she felt he deserved the blame after everything he'd done to her.

With a sense of finality, she wrote down her response and held it up, turning her eyes away.

 _"My dad shot me."_

Mike read the paper, then blinked and furrowed his brows as he read it again, and again, and reread it a fourth time.

Then he leaned back and stared at her.

"Seriously?" he muttered. "Your old man was the one who gave you that scar?"

She nodded, feeling a little ill.

"Why the fuck would he do something like that? And how is he not in prison?! A bullet to the chest... that's attempted murder!"

Meg's shoulders sagged and she weakly wrote down a lengthy explanation before holding it up.

He tilted his head slightly to read it.

 _"He didn't really have a reason. I was sort of having a good day, but when I got home from school, I walked into the living room and said hi. That was it. All I said was 'Hi dad' and he just whipped around and shot me in the chest with the gun he keeps under his bed. And after he did it, he just left me there on the floor, like it was nothing. If it hadn't been for my brother, Chris, I probably wouldn't be here right now... he was the one who called the ambulance."_

Mike's eyes actually widened in what looked like shock.

"Seriously?" he scoffed. "How did he not get arrested?!"

 _"He told everyone that I shot myself. My whole family was pulled into court over it, but everyone testified that I'd been strongly suicidal for weeks,"_ Meg wrote, then sadly added, " _which was... actually the truth. I was feeling suicidal back then, and that's why he ended up getting away with it and didn't go to prison."_

Mike's eyes were blank, lacking any and all sheen, when she averted her gaze with a tight jaw.

"And yet you still live in that house," he droned; it wasn't even a question.

Meg gave him a pained look, then scribbled on the pad and held it up.

 _"Where else would I go? Everyone in this entire city hates me for some reason that I can't even figure out. I get that my family is insane, but I never understood why I'm always being blamed for their stupidity when I never do anything or get involved. People hate the Grifffins, and I'm one of them. That's just how it is."_

Mike shook his head, but before he could say anything else, the bell rang.

He looked up, then, and sighed.

"Looks like lunch is over," he said quietly, getting to his feet with a grim expression. "Come on, Beanie Girl. Let's go."

Meg closed her writing pad and put her pen behind her ear when he got behind the chair and started pushing it towards the sidewalk.

She didn't know if telling him had been a good idea, but in the end, it didn't matter.

He had listened to her and for whatever reason, he was actually on her side.

It gave her the illusion of hope.

And that, in a world where everything was so dark and bleak that she would normally rather die than keep going, was a blessing.

A blessing that was very hard to find.


	14. Chapter 13: Karma

**Author's Note:** _Sorry about the extremely long delay, again. And I doubly apologize about the misleading updates: my writing style has improved since I first began this, and I decided to go back and clean up all of the POV and grammatical/spelling errors/typos that I personally noticed to make the overall reading experience for newer viewers more enjoyable. I also spliced a few chapters and added further content to them for easier reading. Oh, and there's a lull in my previously mentioned project, so I'll be uploading a few new chapters here and there. Stay tuned! And thank you all for being so damn patient. I very much appreciate it._

* * *

 **Chapter Thirteen: Karma**

The rest of the day passed Meg by in a literal blur.

When she'd returned to class, people had whispered and muttered all around her, but she'd been blown into a sense of shock when she'd overheard what Mike had really done to make everyone back off. At first, she hadn't been able to believe her ears, or even the people around her... but everyone, literally everyone, kept saying the same thing amongst themselves, and she could clearly remember how close he'd been.

But what she didn't understand was... why?

She was ugly, had scars all over her body, she had a terrible reputation because of her family... so, why would he do that to himself?

Because in all honesty, if the whispers were true, Mike had actually been pretending to kiss her in front of the whole school.

Eyes locked on her worksheet, she robotically scribbled down answer after answer, mulling over it, wondering at it, worrying about it, not understanding what he could gain or why he'd go so far. No matter how hard she thought about it, his decision didn't make any sense: he'd agreed to be her bodyguard, but he didn't like her much, so why would he pretend to kiss her in front of everyone?

Why tarnish his own reputation over a falsehood?

It couldn't be because he actually liked her.

He'd have kissed her for real if that were the case because he was just that kind of guy: he was blunt, no-nonsense, and had zero bullshit tolerance.

He did what he wanted to.

And that's why she didn't understand.

Why would he want to fake a kiss in front of everyone at school?

She aggravatedly gnawed on her pencil and looked out the classroom window, unable to focus on anything but the strange decision he'd made. Twenty minutes before the final bell, someone opened the classroom door and Meg turned with everyone else, casting a glance at the arrival, a fairly pretty Asian girl wearing a white hair-clip to keep her bangs pinned off to the side. Her last hour teacher, Mr. Thompson, turned and gave her a disapproving leer until she lifted a pink slip and handed it to him.

The man pushed his glasses up his nose and tilted his head back to read it, then scowled intensely and looked right at Meg.

"Griffin!" he barked. "Main office. Now."

Meg cringed and wheeled herself over to the desk to hand in her half-finished paper before rolling towards the door. The trip through the halls was of the silent variety since everyone was still in class, but even as she made her way towards the office, her stomach sank since there could only be one reason that Principle Sheppard would call her before classes were over. Sure enough, when she made her way in, Jared and Mike were both already sitting in the two available seats.

Nurse Anna was standing in front of the headmaster's desk with folded arms, but she turned around at the sound of the door opening, looking grim.

Just beyond her was the principal, who looked rather small behind his Mahogany desk.

"Hello, Meg," he greeted, watching as she curtly closed the door behind her. "I take it you know what this is about?"

Mike cast an intense stare her way before staring straight ahead; Jared merely glowered, glaring at the floor. She shifted her weight in the chair, then grabbed the pad and her pen, scribbling down a response. Everyone turned when she held it up.

 _'I think so'_

"Then let me clarify," the man said, leaning back and folding his hands. "Mr. Alistair made a very serious complaint that Mike Pulaski physically harmed and threatened him, and as he is in fairly bad shape, we asked Mr. Pulaski to address the situation, and he did. He admitted to us that he did, in fact, get into a physical altercation with Mr. Alistair, but he claims it was because he witnessed Alistair 'beating on you,' as he put it, and that he even harassed you sexually."

Meg swallowed hard when both boys looked at her with different types of intensity.

One gaze was so hostile she was terrified to meet his gaze, the other was just... piercing and hard.

She lowered her eyes and scribbled a response.

 _"Mike was only protecting me from him."_

Sheppard's face remained blank as he read the reply, but his eyes shone when he nodded. He raised a hand, gesturing towards Nurse Anna, who instantly made her way behind the wheelchair and started pushing Meg towards the door.

"Please go with Anna so she can inspect your back and stomach, then," he said calmly. "We'll see if your own injuries match up with the stories we've already heard before making any critical decisions."

Jared lunged to his feet.

"You're seriously gonna believe him over me?!" he barked, foaming at the mouth. "He beat the shit out of her once before! He could have done it again afterwards, and its not a secret that Meg is scared of him! She's the sort to cover for him just to save her own hide! Why do you think _I'm_ the bad guy here?!"

"Mr. Alistair," Sheppard said sternly, "we're merely going over the evidence. Take your seat."

"Looks like your bullying backfired," Mike grunted, folding his arms with a smirk. "Its called karma, bitch."

"Mr. Pulaski," Sheppard sighed, giving him a look, "watch your language."

Meg noticed, even as she was being pushed out of the room by Anna, that his tone held no real force or fire and was mildly encouraged by that. She hoped that Mike wouldn't be in too much trouble, but the inspection was even quicker than the trip, since all Anna really had to do was lift the back of her shirt to see the result of Jared's attack. Meg couldn't help but wonder how bad the bruising was when the blonde woman's breath caught and she stared, bug eyed, at her back.

"Oh, my God," Anna whispered, touching her skin. "How... how hard did he kick you?"

Meg doodled her response, huddled forward as she was, before holding the writing pad under her nose.

 _'Hard. It hurt like hell.'_

"If he wasn't a minor, I'd _kill_ him," Anna deadpanned, grinding her pretty white teeth with her blue eyes narrowed. "You got very, _very_ lucky."

She stared at the school nurse in shock, then scribbled her response.

' _How is getting beat up lucky in any way?!'_

"That's not what I meant. You're lucky to be alive since you're still recovering from back surgery," the woman told her, nostrils flaring with fury. "If he'd kicked you even an inch higher... he would have ruptured the spinal vertebrae that was damaged during the car accident and _killed_ you. There's no if, it _would_ have _killed_ you, Megan! If he kicked you hard enough to leave a bruise the size of your whole head, why didn't you come see me right after he did it?! Why didn't you tell anyone?"

She was a little startled to have so much anger being directed at her from Nurse Annabel since the woman was normally exceedingly cheerful.

She tentatively wrote a response.

 _'It didn't hurt much afterwards, and I didn't know the bruise was really that bad.'_

The woman's blue eyes skimmed across the response.

"Well, next time someone kicks you, or even tries to take a video of you lying helpless on your back with your underwear exposed," she said sourly, "talk to me. I'm called a councilor for a reason, you know, and I also happen to think you're a pretty girl with a lot of unreleased potential. You don't deserve shit like this... pardon my French."

Meg nodded, keeping her eyes trained on the floor.

"Let's head back."

Without waiting for a response, the blonde grabbed the handlebars and pushed her back towards the principle's office, heels clacking against tile. All three males in the room looked up when they returned, but Principle Sheppard looked at Anna expectantly. The woman wasted little time, stepping forward with her arms crossed; she was visibly livid, lips pursed, jaw clenched, blue eyes narrowed... she had one hell of an angry mom face, that was for damn sure.

"So, is it true?" the principle asked. "Where do we go from here, Nurse Annabel?"

It took the woman a second to respond, but when she did, each word was clipped and articulate.

"If anything," she said calmly, collectedly even, although her flaming eyes told another story, "Mr. Pulaski saved Megan's life."

Principle Sheppard seemed startled, as did both boys, who turned to look at her with varying expressions of perplexity and shock.

"What do you mean?" the man inquired, leaning forward and fixing her with an intent stare.

"I mean that the extent of the damage done to Megan's back was far worse than I thought it would be," she said in a thin, no-nonsense tone. "She has a nasty bruise the size of a _basketball_ right beneath the spot where she had surgery on her spine. The amount of force needed to cause that much bruising in such a short amount of time is considerably large. And based on what I saw... if he'd kicked her just an inch higher, she'd have been killed instantly. Mr. Pulaski did the right thing."

Sheppard nodded, then turned and looked at Jared with cold eyes.

"I still need to speak with your parents, but without a doubt your punishment will be at _minimum_ a month's suspension," he said quietly. "I'm also going to have a talk with the school board to see whether your actions would warrant further legal action. It is possible that you will be banned from playing football with our school."

"WHAT?!" Jared roared, lunging to his feet yet again. "YOU CAN'T DO THAT!"

"As a matter of fact, you're right," Principle Sheppard said, just as the final bell rang. "It's up to the school board as a whole, but I'm sure after being given the facts about what you've done, your punishment won't be very hard to decide on."

Jared's eyes narrowed and his face turned red... before he paused.

Smirked.

"Prove that I did it," he sneered, folding his arms. "If you want to play the blame game, prove it was me. I dare you."

Principle Sheppard raised an eyebrow, and then turned to look at Mike, who hadn't so much as batted an eyelash; he was slouching with a cold, stony face.

"Where did these altercations take place?" he politely inquired. "What part of the school?"

Mike raised an eyebrow.

"A little grassy spot behind the school, near the cafeteria side entrance."

The man nodded with a kind smile, but when he turned on the flat screen resting against his office wall using a remote he pulled from a drawer, Jared's smirk faded into a look of grim confusion; he stared at the flickering screen just like everyone else in the room, including Meg, as the principle did something on his computer. Within seconds, the screen flicked and Meg saw the very same spot through a camera broadcasting security footage.

Jared's face went bone white.

"Now, this happened around lunch time, didn't it?" the principle asked, smiling at Jared kindly before clicking the mouse. "I'm normally not forced to use this method, as most of the students here are quite proactive and well-behaved, but today I'll make an exception. Let's go back and see what happened in full."

Jared sank down into the chair, fists clenched, face tight and he didn't look at the screen as the footage was rewound. Meg blinked when she came into view since watching herself being pushed by Mike in reverse was strange. The footage zoomed back over the fight, over Jared hurting her and taking a video of her lying with her underwear showing, back to before he'd arrived, when she'd been daydreaming with her head tilted back, eyes closed.

All of it happened so fast she could barely even see it.

The principle stopped rewinding and pressed play just as Mike left her there, and they watched.

Seeing herself from that angle made her feel weird, since she looked smaller than she felt.

Much smaller.

Then, Jared arriving... slamming his hands on her wheelchair and bringing his face close, even though she was obviously trying to pull away. Anna's eyes went hard when she saw the footage of him flipping the chair sideways, but when he lifted his leg so high that his knee went past his chin, she gasped and covered her mouth; sure enough, his foot came down at breakneck speed and landed right on her back.

The principle flinched, but Mike was stone-faced, and Meg watched as she rolled over on screen just in time for another kick to hit her in the chest.

Then came the blow that had landed on her arms, which she'd used to cover her face.

Just as he'd lifted his leg again, however, he'd paused... and then pulled out his phone, touching the screen and holding it out.

The principle flicked the television off and turned, then, looking right at him.

"It would seem that I have my proof, Mr. Alistair," he said quietly, waving towards the door. "I'll see you tomorrow morning for the conference with your parents to discuss the full extent your punishment. For now, the bell has rung, and you are dismissed."

"Whatever," he snarled, whipping to his feet and casting Meg a glare that curdled her blood, "fucking bitches..."

He stormed out of the office without another word, slamming the door behind him.

"Nurse Anna, would you please do me a favor and give me a moment alone with Miss Griffin and Mr Pulaski?" Sheppard politely inquired. "I wish to finish the rest of this discussion in private, and I do believe that you have a bit of paperwork that you're behind on."

"Sure," the woman said in a low tone, working her jaw. "After everything I just saw on that television screen, I... well, I need a distraction, anyway."

He nodded understandingly when she saw herself out of the room, leaving the three of them alone.

Meg, however, was surprised when Mike uncrossed his arms and glared at him.

"So, old man, what happens from here?"

Principle Sheppard inclined his head.

"Your father has already been notified of your less than satisfactory actions towards Mr Alistair," he said slowly, then quietly added, "but due to the highly unpleasant and very shameful circumstances leading up to them, we have decided _not_ to suspend you."

Mike winced... then paused.

Backtracked.

Blinked, then blinked again.

And even after all that, Meg had a feeling that he still couldn't tell if he had been hearing the man correctly.

"Hold up," he hesitantly scoffed, lifting his hands. "Are you saying I'm _not_ going to be suspended or expelled?! You told me last time I was here that if I got into another fight you'd have me out of this school quicker than a bolt of lightning."

"True," Sheppard said, smiling at him, "but even though you got into a physical altercation, you did it to protect someone who couldn't protect herself, and I commend that in every single way. If anything, _I_ should be thanking you."

Mike's jaw dropped, but he quickly snapped it shut and the stony mask returned.

"I don't think I understand," he said slowly. "I beat the living dog shit out of someone. Even though I had a reason, I still hit him first. Aren't I at fault?"

"He nearly beat a girl who can't even walk to _death_ ," the principle said plainly, eyes half-lidded behind his glasses. "Frankly, violence in our school is not tolerated, _unless_ it's in the name of self defense only. What you did was a little extreme, but Jared wouldn't have stopped if you hadn't. So, no, you are _not_ at fault here."

Mike was speechless.

"So..." he said slowly, disbelievingly, but somewhat hopefully, "I'm... not in trouble?"

"I didn't say that," the headmaster warned. "You did, after all, go very much overboard. So, you will receive a punishment for your actions. I hope you accept it in good favor."

"With pleasure."

The quick response surprised Meg a little bit.

"Well," Sheppard chuckled, "it's very interesting that you're so enthusiastic."

 _"_ I'm just glad I'm not getting expelled," Mike countered, slouching a little more languidly. "My dad would have thrown a bitch fit."

"Language," Sheppard sighed, giving him a reproachful look before leaning back and interlacing his fingers on top of his desk. "Now, getting down to business... I will be completely honest with you: your punishment isn't really a punishment at all, since I personally believe in taking opportunities when they arrive."

"What?" Mike asked, frowning. "What sort of opportunities?"

"Starting tomorrow, I'm assigning you the responsibility of helping the handicapped students in our school during your free moments for the rest of the year," the man said slyly, and Meg gawped, since it was no secret that the only person with any sort of handicap _in_ the school was _her_! "Furthermore, every Saturday at the end of each month, you and Mr. Alistair will join the school faculty for three hours of community service on or off campus. It depends on what they decide to do."

Mike nodded without complaint.

"Anything else?"

"No, Mr. Pulaski, that is all I wished to speak with you about. Unless you have any questions, you may head home."

"I'll do that, then," the blonde boy grunted, rising to his feet. "Later."

Meg watched as he lumbered out of the room and closed the door, but when it shut, she turned back around to face principle Sheppard.

He was looking at her in a way that had her hair standing on end.

"Miss Griffin," he muttered, shaking his head; instead of saying anything further, he turned the television on again and turned the volume all the way up. Meg blinked and stared at the screen to see footage of her scribbling something down in the writing pad... but when she held it up, the footage paused, and suddenly zoomed in so close that she was thrown a little off guard. The man leaned back, then, staring at the ceiling with a hand on the bridge of his nose.

The words _"My Dad Shot Me"_ were flickering in very poor quality on the screen.

Meg swallowed hard and lowered her eyes.

"Is it true?"

His tone made her flinch and huddle in on herself.

Even though her principle was nice, talking to him about it wouldn't fix anything... not her scar, or her family situation, or her father.

"I won't force you to talk about it," Sheppard murmured, looking at her with tired eyes, "but I do want you to think very long and hard about what it is you wish to do about the situation concerning the bullying. I'm on your side, Megan... and if you ever wish to speak with me, don't hesitate. I'm always willing to listen."

She nodded at him, then scribbled ' _thank you_ ' before turning her wheelchair around and rolling herself towards the door. Once she was out in the hall, however, she was startled when a large hand came down on her shoulder. She jumped and whipped her head around to see Mike himself staring down his nose at her.

"Let's get the hell out of here," he muttered, jerking his head back and doing an about face. "Come on."

Meg was confused, but she followed him regardless.

The walk to his locker was slow given how achy she was, but once he'd grabbed his things, he led the way way outside... where he promptly halted. Meg dragged the wheels of her chair to a stop and looked at him in confusion when he turned and looked down at her with the intensity that always made her cringe. He folded his thick arms and cocked his head, raising a single eyebrow.

"Start moving," he ordered, nodding towards the road. "I'm walking you home."

She jerked, staring at him in shock, then flipped the pad open and scribbled madly.

His eyes skimmed across the paper.

 _"Why are you walking me home?"_

"Because Jared is the kind of guy who'd try to get even outside of school," he said, scowling impatiently. "Move it, Beanie Girl."

Meg let out an exasperated sigh through her nose, but she wheeled her way down the ramp and onto the sidewalk regardless. She could hear his footsteps behind her, but she kept her eyes straight ahead. The walk from the school to her house normally took twenty minutes on foot, but it would take a little bit longer now that she was crippled... and since getting ready would likely take a lot longer than she was used to, she would probably have to start going to bed earlier to get up with enough time.

She didn't really own any skirts aside from what she presently had on, so if she wanted clothing that would be easy to put on, she'd have to go shopping.

Unfortunately, she wasn't really allowed in certain parts of the mall...

She stared at the ground bitterly when the memories from before Stewie had been born flooded back into her head. When she'd been nine, she'd had her first and last physical outburst with Lois. Her mom had made an offhanded comment about how ugly her hat looked, and for once, she'd actually fired back a retort and said that it was better than the shade of red dye her mom used. Lois hadn't liked that at all, and had slapped her across the mouth.

And for the first time, the rage... the anger, abrupt and swift, had risen within her chest. She'd lost her temper and taken a picture frame from one of the side tables and had thrown it at her mother. It hadn't really hurt Lois, since it had glanced off of her arm thanks to Meg's poor aim, but the events that had come afterwards had been some of the hardest of her life. For three entire years, her parents had kept her locked up in the basement and had starved her every single day.

They'd never let her out for anything but school, and she hadn't been allowed to eat at home.

The basement door still had claw marks from all the times she'd tried to get it open, to make them hear her, to forgive her.

She would have starved to death if she hadn't gotten smart.

Every single day after school, she'd gone to the mall on her own and had started looking around the food courts, asking for handouts... and at first, people had given them to her since she'd been young enough and thin enough to look very unhealthy. But after a time, they'd stopped and started turning her away, which had forced her to look elsewhere. She'd tried to get food from anywhere she possibly could: from strangers, from restaurants, even from garbage cans and dumpsters.

But the place she'd discovered the best possible method had been the mall.

She'd learned from watching people's eating habits that mall shoppers sometimes had a big tendency to leave their tables with a lot of food still on their plates.

Back then, she'd been so desperate for something edible that she hadn't cared about how she got it or where it had been: every single day, she would wait and watch people eat in the food courts, and when they left, if there was anything still left on their plates, she would run over and eat as much as she possibly could. She'd gotten caught doing it a few times, but nobody had really done anything more than give her dirty, disgusted looks until a few weeks before her thirteenth birthday, when one of the newer workers in the food court had yelled at her. The way he'd looked at her back then had made her feel disgusting.

She'd run away and hadn't gone back there since.

Not long after that incident, though, her parents had let her out of the basement and she'd moved back into her bedroom.

And the food... she'd never been more appreciative.

But she hadn't been able to control herself, and that's why she'd gained so much weight in the first place.

She had gotten fat because her parents had literally kept her locked up in the basement like a dog and starved her for three years.

Hollow relief graced Meg's tired limbs when she made it to Spooner street, and she wheeled towards her house with renewed vigor, but when she turned and tried to roll up the sidewalk towards her front door, Mike stopped her in her tracks by gripping the handlebars. She jerked, since she'd almost forgotten that he'd been escorting her home, lost in her own head as she'd been. He looked down at her, then stared at the house with a taut mouth.

"That your place? This house?" he asked, and when she nodded, he let go of the chair. "Then, I'll see you later. Starting tomorrow, I'll be picking you up for school in my truck."

Meg jerked and opened her mouth to say it wasn't necessary, but nothing aside from a whisper came out.

He was already halfway down the block, too... running a hand through her hair, Meg leaned back and stared at the sky, too overloaded with the day's events to try comprehending what had just happened. She didn't understand the way his mind worked. He genuinely seemed to be helping her, but he was still violent... and his total one eighty towards her had come as something of a surprise. She hadn't been expecting him to keep his end of the deal...

But perhaps that was why, though.

Her level of expectation.

She was so used to expecting nothing but the absolute worst that it genuinely threw her off and made her jittery when something didn't go all that badly. She always ended up feeling skeptical and paranoid about what was really going on behind the scenes. Meg closed her eyes and set her hands in her lap, tilting her head back when a strong breeze suddenly rushed against her body from the front. It lifted her hair clean off her shoulders and carried cotton tufts from the trees her way, smelling of sweetness.

And yet, all this breeze did was make her sad.

She opened the sky and stared at it bleakly.

And to herself, she thought...

 _I wish I could disappear._


	15. Chapter 14: Deal With A Devil

**Chapter Fourteen: Deal with a Devil**

When Meg unlocked the door, all she really wanted to do was go upstairs, use the bathroom, take a bath, and then go to sleep. She was exhausted, her head was killing her from bashing it against the car window that morning, and her whole body was aching and throbbing from the beating she'd taken.

Fate, as it turned out, had other plans for her.

Brian was lounging on the couch with his massive white head resting on his paws, brown eyes locked on the front of a newspaper; even as she wheeled her way inside the house, he grabbed the corner with his teeth and used his head to turn the page before settling back down and continuing his reading.

He didn't give her a second glance, and similarly, she kept her gaze focused on the stairs.

She was just about to slide onto the carpet like the previous day when his voice filled the air.

"Stewie's waiting for you in the kitchen, Meg."

Her hands froze on the wheels and she stared sightlessly at the wooden stairs when she remembered what had happened with Stewie only yesterday. She had forgotten about it completely with everything going on, had told herself before falling asleep that it couldn't have been real, that it had been her head playing tricks or the meds...

Or maybe Brian was simply letting her know that her brother needed her for something.

Yeah, that had to have been it.

Letting out a sigh, she wheeled herself toward the kitchen, trying to remain optimistic... but that optimism died the moment she rolled through the arch and saw her baby brother sitting on the kitchen table with two screwdrivers and a pile of electrical tools beside him. She froze, gawking at the sight of him tinkering with a strange-looking machine.

He glanced up at her for a second, then sneered, lip curling.

"Well," he snootily drawled, going back to tinkering. "It's about time you showed up. I must speak with you about something of the utmost importance!"

Meg's mouth dropped open in shock and she stared, bug-eyed, at Stewie for a good thirty seconds until he paused, slowly turning his head and looking at her through his shock of soft brown hair. Those arctic blue eyes were very cold and calculating, and also very impatient: the expression on his face was completely adult-like.

It didn't suit his young, childish face in the slightest.

"Did you not hear me?" he demanded; when Meg didn't move, he slapped his little hand against the table and bellowed, "NOW, WOMAN! DON'T MAKE ME REPEAT MYSELF!"

She jumped and hastily wheeled herself over to the table, shivering under her little brother's gaze.

"Much better," Stewie said, then went back to tinkering, gaze becoming focused. "I'm sure you have a great deal of questions now that I've revealed my secret. I bet you're wondering things like how I'm talking so articulately, aren't you? Not that I blame you... the idiots in this house never seem to notice anything, ever."

Meg tentatively opened the pad and uncapped the pen before scribbling down a jerky response.

 _'I thought I was going crazy yesterday. I'm still not so sure I'm not crazy.'_

He glanced up at the pad, but within a literal split second he was back to working on whatever contraption had been laid out on the table.

"You're not crazy, I can assure you," Stewie told her, fiddling with something that sparked; she jumped, staring at the strange blob of a machine in shock, but he seemed unfazed. "Truth is, I have advanced intellect unlike anything this world has ever seen. I also have a photographic memory. I remember every single moment of my life thus far, as if I were still living through it. Only a week out of the womb, I was already able to talk and think and create."

Meg stared at him, then wrote her response and held it up.

 _'Why didn't you ever say anything?'_

Again, only a split second glance on his part.

"I despise Lois and the fat man," he said coldly, holding up his screwdriver with a scary, emotionless face that didn't suit his childlike features. "I kept my mouth shut because I knew I'd never have another moment to myself ever again if Lois ever found out about my genius. She'd spend every single waking second of her time trying to milk it and turn me into a trophy for personal recognition when all _she's_ really good for is a meal and a diaper change."

Meg leaned back, mind blown, not sure how to respond, but after a few seconds, she wrote down her biggest question.

 _'Why did you tell me all this? What changed?'_

This time, when he looked at the pad, instead of glancing back down he met her eyes head on.

And smiled.

It was a mischievous little smirk, but it wasn't unfriendly.

"Simple," he drawled, holding out his little hand; she stared at it, but when he wiggled his fingers in the universal gesture for ' _come here_ ' she tentatively wheeled herself a bit closer and held out her own hand. He took it gently, little fingers wrapping around her much larger palm. "You lost your legs and your voice because you thought I was going to perish. That means you're useful, dear sister, so I've decided to let you in on everything Brian and I do."

Meg stared at the tiny fingers ensnaring her palm with a hollow feeling in her chest.

 _Is this really happening?_ she wondered, dazed. _I can't understand anything. What is this?_

His head suddenly moved in the path of her gaze, and those blue eyes caught her attention.

"You'll have to work hard on your own if you want to get your legs back," Stewie said in a monotone, staring at her without blinking, "but if you prove yourself truly useful to me, and you vow on your life to keep everything you might or might not learn about Brian or myself an absolute secret, I'll return your voice to you, Meg."

 _That_ caught her attention.

Stunned, she gawked at him yet again, then scribbled a frantic response. His eyes ghosted along it when she held it up.

 _'How could you do that?! I'm paralyzed, Stewie! My vocal chords are damaged! They won't work!"_

"How do you think Brian speaks to us?" he deadpanned, raising an eyebrow when she did a double take. "Surely you didn't think his collar was some sort of mail-order trinket that just happened to really work, did you?"

Meg frowned, since she had, actually, wondered about that a few times in the past.

Nobody knew where he'd gotten it since he'd had it before he'd come to live with them, but he'd been a talker since they'd met him, at the very least. Her whole family had been shocked at first, but when the reality had sunken in that Brian was an actual talking dog, Peter hadn't hesitated to make him a Griffin.

"That collar was made by me," Stewie boasted, slyly wiggling his eyebrows; pulling his hand off hers, he grabbed another tool from the pile and resumed his tinkering. "Don't ask questions about how I gave it to him. That will come in time once I'm sure you're trustworthy. Now, let's make a deal and pinkie swear on it, shall we?"

Meg warily scribbled in the pad and held it up.

 _'What deal?'_

And again, only a split second glance on his part.

 _"_ From here on out, I'd like you to be my personal assistant," Stewie said simply. "You won't have to do much as I'm quite resourceful, but there _are_ times when an extra set of hands would make my inventing sprees a little easier, and it would also be beneficial to have someone other than Brian covering for me if and when things go wrong."

Meg went limp in her chair, letting out a heavy sigh.

Her brother obviously heard it and gave her a sour look, but just as she opened his mouth, she started writing in the pad and tiredly held it up. His jaw snapped shut when he read what was on the page.

 _'I love you, Stewie, but I dunno if I can go through with this.'_

"And why ever not?" he demanded, affronted; he planted his hands on his hips. "I'm offering to give you your voice back."

Meg shook her head and scribbled a response.

 _'I'm going to have a hard enough time just getting dressed, getting around the house, crawling up and down the stairs, using the bathroom, bathing, and everything else... I'm going to be far too tired to do anything that might help you. It's only been one day and I'm already so exhausted I can barely move my chair anymore.'_

"Oh, is that all?" he airily asked, going back to tinkering. "In that case, if you agree to it, I'll invent some devices that will fix all those problems in a jiffy! That shouldn't be too hard, or even all that time consuming... so, what do you say? Will you become my personal assistant?"

Meg hesitated, since she didn't know how a four year old could manage to make her life easier or even fix her voice... but then again, she didn't know how he was the way he was, either. In the end, she decided to go along with it, since she figured she could always stop if he didn't keep his end of the deal. Plus, she still had a weird feeling that this was all just a strange dream.

She wrote her response in the pad and held it up.

 _'Fine. You have a deal.'_

"Excellent!" he bugled, nodding at her; then he saw the clock on the wall and winced. "Blast it. I should clean this up before the fat man gets back. You're free to do as you wish. If I need something, I'll come to you. Oh, and I'll begin working on those devices I mentioned later this evening."

Meg watched in a daze as he pulled something out of his overalls pocket and held it up, but when a blinding flash filled the room and made her eyes smart, she flailed and rolled backwards, slamming into the wall. Her bruise smarted and throbbed, sending stars shooting into her brain, but when her vision cleared she saw that the strange tools, the electrical parts, and the odd blob of a machine were all gone, as if they'd never been there in the first place.

Stewie was already wandering out of the room.

He paused right before he walked out, however, and turned with a perplexed look on his face.

"Why did you do it, by the way?" he casually inquired, tilting his head. "It doesn't make sense, to be honest."

Meg blinked, confused, and scribbled in the pad.

 _'Why did I do what?'_

He rolled his eyes and folded his arms, staring at her with a dead fish stare

"Jump in front of a speeding car on my behalf, you fool," he reiterated, then frowned. "I've never once given you a reason to do something like that for me. You know that I dislike you... my behavior patterns were unmistakable, so why is it that you took a hit for me when all I've ever done is kick or hit you?"

A wash of depression came over her in an unexpected wave.

She sagged, then wrote her answer down.

 _'You're my little brother, Stewie. Even if you hate me like everyone else, we're still family, and I can't stop myself from loving you. As much as it sucks, you guys are all I have.'_

His eyes lingered on her words far longer than they had on any of her other responses.

"Touche," he stoically droned.

Doing an about face, he walked out without another word, and after that, Meg was alone. She sat there for a long time, dazed, confused, wondering what the hell had just happened... but even though she wanted to go upstairs, she was too tired to move.

She folded her hands on her lap and leaned back, head coming to rest against the kitchen wall, staring tiredly at it; her eyelids drooped, her muscles tingled, and every part of her felt heavy.

The silence, broken only by the ticking of the kitchen clock, lulled her.

Her eyes fell closed.

The ticking was rhythmic in her ears.

 _It happened unexpectedly: a good dream._

 _She could see a woman with short red hair standing in front of a well-kept stove, happily humming a little tune under her breath. Her father, sitting across from her, reading the paper despite his hulking size. The man's were mellow, and even though his face was expressionless, he somehow seemed happier than he'd been in years._

 _It really was a simple dream._

 _But despite that... Meg was... happy._

 _"Mama," she called, happily lifting her arms. "Mama... hug!"_

 _Lois's short red hair fanned around her ears when she happily turned and looked at her, sweeping forward with her arms stretched wide._

"Meeeeg..."

 _Those arms... those warm, loving arms... they were going to -_

"Meeeeeeeeg... wake up!"

A loud, deafening metal clang jerked her out of her dream and her mother's smiling face abruptly vanished like a cloud.

With her small white hands still outstretched towards the perfect dream, Meg groggily blinked at the banging pots that Peter was rapidly smashing together, grinning the grin she hated so much; reality slowly came back, and it did so in a slow, painful manner. Meg let out a huff of air and pressed a hand against her forehead, but the banging and her father's raucous laughter was giving her a headache, so she grumpily rolled herself out of the kitchen.

Dinner had already been made and eaten from the look and smell of things.

The windows were dark, which likely meant she'd been out cold for the rest of the day.

She tiredly wheeled over to the stairs, then flopped out onto the first one and began the difficult crawl to the top, back screaming and burning with the effort of pulling herself up one at a time. She had to stop halfway there to catch her breath, and she pillowed her head on her arms, but once she was able to she continued to the top.

Then she crawled all the way to her room and dragged herself into bed.

She tiredly set her alarm clock to go off at three thirty in the morning just in case before flopping back. Lifting her eyes, she looked around her room... then closed them, feeling a little sick.

She wished she could go back into the dream and stay there forever, but her wishes never came true.

She went back to sleep a second time fighting back the urge to cry.

It had been a long day.


	16. Chapter 15: Struggle

**Chapter Fifteen: Struggle**

When her alarm clock went off, blaring that horridly obnoxious beeping, the first thing Meg realized was that she _hurt._ The _second_ thing she realized was that she was so tired she could barely make her eyes creak open.

Flailing for the snooze button, she slapped it twice for good measure, and closed her eyes in the hopes of catching just a few more minutes of sleep... but even though she was plum tuckered out, she couldn't switch her brain off again.

In the end, she put on her glasses and forced her exhausted body to roll off the bed.

Her back and chest and arms all screamed in unison and she wheezed, freezing for a moment, trying to breathe.

She waited until the pain faded before tiredly dragged herself over to her closet using her arms. Lunging upright, she snagged the knob and dragged the slatted white door open. Determined to get it at least part of the way finished, she ignored the agony in her muscles and manually adjusted her legs so she wouldn't bend the wrong way.

All of this took up energy she didn't really have, so she stopped to catch her breath.

 _This is so hard,_ she mentally complained. _I don't know if I can do this every day..._

She didn't allow her mind even a moment to start feeling sorry for herself.

She didn't have that luxury anymore.

Using her grip on the closet door, she hoisted her upper torso as high as she possibly could and lunged for one of her favorite pink t-shirts. It took her a few lunges, but she eventually snagged it and dragged it off the hanger. She landed on her butt with a thud, but she was mildly surprised when her hat came down with it.

Apparently, either her mother or her father had put it on the hanger with this very shirt.

She looked at the tattered jeans dangling from the other hangers, then glanced down at the skirt, black shoes, and white stockings she hadn't even managed to get off the previous evening. She gave a mental shrug before putting her hat on and draping the pink t-shirt around her legs.

She'd only worn the skirt and socks once, so she figured they had a good two more days of use in them before they needed to be washed, but still, jeans really were going to take too much time. Letting out a sigh, Meg crawled her way over to her dresser and opened the first drawer, patting around for her wallet and some clean underwear.

Once she'd snagged them, she slid her hand beneath the dresser and pulled out a small padlocked safe.

All of the savings from her odd jobs over the years were stashed in here, around three thousand dollars, total. Twisting the combination, she opened the box and withdrew a good two hundred dollars, sliding the bills into her wallet before locking the safe and pushing it into the farthest reaches of her dresser.

She had everything she needed aside from her backpack.

She looked around, but spotted it beneath her bed and took a second to drag it out, sliding the straps across her shoulders; then she balled her underwear into a fist and stuck her wallet between her teeth, mentally fortifying herself to make her way to the bathroom and use it like a regular person before taking a bath.

At the very least, she had gotten lucky in this regard since she still had complete control over her bladder and her other more _personal_ bodily functions.

According to the doctors in the hospital, that meant she didn't have to... well, _go..._ in a bag attached to her body. She was relieved about that more than anything else since she didn't know if she would have ever been able to handle the shame of going to the bathroom anywhere but a toilet.

The very thought was mortifying and gross.

The trip to the bathroom felt like a journey of a thousand miles, but she made it even though it took her more effort than she wanted to admit. She wasted little time getting undressed, setting all of her clothes on top of the toilet seat before unhooking her bra. After that, she managed to get her usual routine going of toilet and teeth brushing over with, but next came the hard part: bathing.

Once the tub was full of water, she pulled herself in and relaxed, lazing for a good ten minutes. The heat made her sore muscles and bruised skin feel a little bit better, but she knew she couldn't relax for too long, so she pulled herself forward, splashed her face and hair, and grabbed some soap and shampoo off the little alcove in the wall. She took her time washing her hair, and made sure to scrub every part of her body, but once she was finished, she let the water drain out of the tub completely and turned the shower on so she could fully rinse herself off.

When she rinsed the lather off, she did the usual conditioner routine.

Once she was clean, she crawled out of the bathtub and snagged one of the towels from the good chunk of time was wasted trying to get herself dry and dressed. She smoothed her shirt, tugged her beanie down over her hair, tucked her wallet into her backpack, and slid the backpack over her shoulder

Then came the hardest part; crawling her way downstairs to where her chair was.

By the time she made it and crawled in, the windows were emanating dark blue light; she tiredly wheeled herself to the kitchen, wanting a drink of water, but she was stymied since she couldn't reach the high cabinet or even the sink.

She sighed balefully, then glanced at the clock and jumped in shock since it had taken three and a half hours just to get out of bed and get ready for school. She'd gotten up at three thirty and it was now six forty-five! If she didn't hurry, she would be late.

Just as she was thinking it, Chris came thundering down the stairs, but just as he passed the kitchen, he paused and looked at her.

"Meg, it's time for school," he said, drawing her eye. "We should get going. Mom and Dad are sleeping in today since the reporters won't be coming back."

Meg nodded wordlessly and wheeled herself towards the front door, but when Chris threw it open, instead of running outside like she was expecting him to, he froze. She stared at his confused expression for a second, then peered around him.

An old, rusty black pickup truck was sitting parked in their driveway behind their family's red sedan, and behind the wheel was none other than Michael Pulaski himself. When they made unexpected eye contact, he immediately got out and shut the door.

"Chop chop, Beanie Girl," he rasped, voice slightly hoarse. "Hurry up."

Confused, Meg rolled towards the truck, but when she came to a halt and reached for the handle, she felt two large hands sliding beneath her arms. She let out a silent gasp as she was lifted clean out of the chair and pulled against his chest; shifting her weight and holding her with one arm, he bent down and grabbed the wheelchair, folding it up.

He walked around to the back of the vehicle and put it in, then opened the passenger door and set her down with an amount of care that she wouldn't have thought a guy like him could show. He even buckled her seat belt.

Meg looked at the front door, where Chris was standing with his mouth open, as Mike got into the driver's seat and keyed the ignition. Then, they were backing out, and he drove down Spooner Street, away from the little yellow house with its red trim and green shingles. This all felt surreal to her, as if it were some strange dream she'd landed in.

He had really come to pick her up in his truck.

But why?

Why would he go so far?

Meg's hands fisted in her skirt, since she really didn't have any answers.

Suddenly, he swerved and pulled over on the side of the road, making her heart jump; she looked out the window to see that they were sitting on a side street, but when his hand touched the side of her head, she clenched her teeth.

She was scared.

Scared of what he was doing... of what he _could_ do if he wanted.

His fingers trailed along her temple, down across her cheek... but then, he pulled back.

"Who hit you?"

Meg paused, since his tone was calm and not what she'd been expecting. She tentatively glanced at him to see him staring straight ahead with both hands on the steering wheel, amber eyes burning holes in the pavement.

She looked around for something to write with, since her pad was beneath the cushion of her wheelchair, and when he noticed he pulled his phone out of his pocket and did something on it before holding it out to her. Meg saw a memo pad already open and quickly texted her response before holding it up.

 _'Nobody hit me.'_

His face blackened into a scowl.

"Don't lie to me," he said coldly. "You have a black eye and a bruise the size of a fist."

Meg was confused about that until she remembered Peter swerving their car the previous morning and sending her head into the window hard enough to crack the safety glass. She instantly winced since she was sure she probably looked pretty roughed up _._

She texted the reply and held it up.

 _'I wasn't hit by anyone. My dad pulled another prank and swerved the car yesterday morning. The bruise is probably from when I hit my head on the window.'_

His expression didn't change.

"Were you sitting in the back seat?" he asked. "Right side?"

Meg blinked, but when she nodded, his eyes narrowed.

Without another word, he keyed the ignition and drove off a little bit faster, hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were bone white. The trip to school was quiet, save for the low hum of the engine.

Mike kept his eyes forward until they made it to the parking lot.

He got out after killing the engine and pocketed his keys, heading around to the back of it and dragging her chair out. Relief graced her tired limbs when he opened the door and pulled her out yet again, holding her so effortlessly that she actually felt light for once.

He set her down in the chair, and held out his hand; she stared at it, puzzled, until she remembered that she was holding his phone and promptly gave it back. People all over the parking lot were staring at them, and a great deal of students were muttering.

The muttering increased when Mike gripped the handles of her chair and pushed her towards the front entrance. The early morning air was chilly; students began to pour through the school doors. Some walked in groups, chatting with each other, while others headed off on their own, speeding and jostling in every direction.

Meg leaned back and let her head flop, staring up at Mike.

His face was stony as ever, but his head was held high, and his eyes were fierce.

She wondered what could have possessed a guy like him to pay any sort of attention to a person like her. She wondered why he was still here, doing as he said he would, when he didn't even like her. She wondered why he'd faked a kiss, why he was escorting her to and from school... why he'd go so far.

His behavior and his actions didn't coincide.

After a few seconds, he noticed her stare and looked down, raising an eyebrow.

But Meg didn't look away.

Even as she looked him right in the eyes, she wondered about him, wondered why that burning gaze was so intense, why he radiated such a threatening aura even when he was helping her. She wanted to know, but was to afraid to ask.

All she could do was look at him.

His brows furrowed.

"Stop staring," he ordered, lifting his eyes with a tight mouth. "It's annoying."

Meg tiredly closed her eyes for the rest of the trip to class.


End file.
